Oh, no, the "security through obscurity" argument again on *nix and Windows. May I ask what OS you think is most popular for servers? What OS was the internet built on? By your logic, there would be as many viruses attacking *nix-type OSes because most servers are running thoses OSes. But there's not. If you were right, sites would be going down all the time, since *nix is supposed to be as vulnerable to malware as Windows. Imagine Google going down at least once a week! Or Slashdot, for that matter. But that doesn't happen that often, does it? If *nix Oses were as vulnerable to malware as Windows, the internet likely would be at the level now that it was in the mid-90s, if it hadn't been abadoned altogether since they couldn't keep the servers running. Or do you think script-kiddies and crackers only want to bother home and business users?
People who keep spouting this ignorant argument need to actually learn about computers and computing history. If you did you'd see just how wrong this nonsense is. Yet you see this spiel everywhere.
The fewer the safer? I wouldn't say that -- Active X is a huge vulnerability all by itself. You may be able to disable Active X in IE7 beta but you can't in 6 without 3rd-party software, to my knowledge.
they already do, you can usually find them eating at macdonalds, or any other fast food joint. beware though, if they get ahold of your credit cards, they will spend it all at the mall, and some wont put out, till after you put a ring on thier finger
Another variety sits around in its underwear all day, watching TV while drinking beer and refuses to help out around the house.
It's quite amusing to call a dead woman a "possible" false positive. What, she was file sharing songs in Heaven or Hell? I'm sure a case could be made that the copyright laws don't apple there.
Are you Steve Ballmer? Because you sure sound like it, spouting off about how everyone and his brother is pirating Windows. That's why we keep tightening the activation requirements and WGA has to phone home every time you boot! I've used ME (came with my first computer), 98, 2k and XP and I've paid for every single damn one of them. Not only that, but I've built computers for over twenty people, sixteen of which put Windows on them and they gave me their copies of Windows to install. Not only were they legit but some of them hadn't even been taken out of the box they came in. The others, I don't know where they got their copies and I didn't ask, but everybody knows I'm not going to pirate anything for them. That's sixteen out of twenty that weren't pirated, so it shure shoots your statistics all to hell that everyone whose computer didn't come with Windows is pirating their copy. But of course, we're all pirates, aren't we? All of MS's own customers are filthy thieves who should be treated like criminals. And anyone who listens to music on their mp3 player. Or watches a movie on their computer! It's all pirated!
I'm sick of this bullshit, people assuming every damn thing is pirated just because Ballmer and *AAs say so. With the *AAs, they need to stop making excuses and put out some quality content to stop their slide in profits -- they're not making stuff that enough people want, period, and they need to actually get off their lazy asses and get to work. But with MS it's just pure paranoia. They're absolutely no different than my paranoid grandmother, who is convinced that people are constantly stealing from her. Really, go look up information on paranoia and you'll see that Microsoft's constant spiels on how much Windows is pirated sound exactly like that. EXACTLY like that. It's pure paranoia coming from the top of the corporation. I bet Ballmer and Gates believe people are stealing form them all the time besides that too. Not only that, but it shows they hold their own customers and supporters -- like you -- in low regard, believing that we are all grubby little thieves, beneath contempt, that they're forced to endure, so much lower than themselves. Oh, the indignity of being forced to deal with all of us filthy criminals!
Sorry, but I have to I call BS on you r BS-calling. SuSe 9 did this to me after installing nVidia drivers. Without the drivers, it was fine. Reboot after installing drivers, kernel panic. I tried a total of four installations (yes, I'm remarkably stubborn). The nVidia card and its drivers worked great with other distros, though.
Also true, but you have to realize that the vast majority of people who touted its stability were upgrading from 98 or even ME. It is definitely far more stable than either ME or 98. 'Course, almost anything is arguably more stable than ME.
Having used both for months, I will tell you what: reliability. XP may be more user-friendly, but the user-friendly components have a tendency to break occasionally. When that happens, they tend to screw up the system until you can fix them. Nothing like that ever happened to me when I used 2k for two years, but it's happened twice in the 6 months I've used XP. I now have XP on this machine and 2k/Debian on my main machine; XP is on the gaming rig.
When the FUD stops flowing out of Redmond, you think all the regular/.ers will be making shit up? More likely, they'll all be going "WTF happened? Was there an eclipse or something? Did I pass out" Have a clue, troll: MS spews out FUD so often, no one has to make up FUD about them. Therein lies the problem with Microsoft.
New games will require DirectX 10 which I believe requires Vista...So how many game companies do you think will make their games DX10-only, trading a much smaller market for over 95% of all Windows-users? Only those who want to lose tons of money and get sued into oblivion by their stock holders...
How come it is so hard to get a PC WITHOUT a Micro$oft OS in North America!!!
I'm in North America, and I'd gladly build you a great computer and put Linux or BSD on it. In fact, all of the computers I build come with Linux, BSD or no OS -- I don't have a license to pre-load Windows on them, and since I'm strictly small-time, I don't want to pirate it or pay big for Windows. Problem is, if you're posting on/., you can probably do the same thing yourself...
Why all the Linux talk in this thread? (Note: I'm a Debian user myself.) There's plenty of open source software for Windows. I think that's the best place to start. All you have to do is point people in that direction, explain that it's free, it will remain free and they can freely share it with anyone and everyone, and that it works. Apps like the Gimp (yes, I fully know it's no replacement for PS, but it's better than many other expensive graphics apps), CdEx, Audacity, 7-Zip, open Office, AbiWord, etc., are growing in popularity for a reason. If you get a Windows user using stuff like that and they're the sort of person who is likely to become interested in OSS, then just gett hem on that and then let nature take its course, so to speak.
Very, very true. My first computer in 2001 came with Windows ME and I've been in the anti-MS camp ever since because of that. It was so buggy it was practically unusable, but Win98 worked fine on the same computer. I rarely saw a BSOD after switching to 98. Now that's just pathetic, truth be told. If they had recalled ME and offered 98 or 2k as a replacement I'd have had nothing bad to say about them, but as it is everyone who paid for ME got royally screwed.
And let's be honest, none of these students is actually producing anything that's inherently valuable, we're talking high school level papers here. Their proprietary attitude towards the utterly useless things they're writing is kind of amusing.
I can make the same argument against virtually every pop song that came out after 1980; nothing inherently valuable (since apparently the individual gets to be the judge of that), utterly useless , etc.; therefore, the RIAA should't have the right to the proprietary attitude. At the very least, by your argument, all of that would apply to the original work of unsigned bands. What the hell difference does it make that it's high school? It's their work and it's being used in this fashion without their permission.
I frankly don't see what more could possibly be done to get people to finally admit that Linux is truely ready for the desktop.
More drivers, and devs including more of the drivers that are available instead of just their favorites. (Not a troll, I'm a Debian-user, but the driver situation still sucks in the *nix world.)
Actually, if you think about it, all babies are parasites. This means that nearly all species of mammals are parasites for part of their lives. And then there are in-laws...
Basically, if you read the EULA.. you will see that many of the responsibilities you desire are basically thrown away. Don't like it.. don't click "I agree", instead simply return the product.
That's what the EULA says, but often the law doesn't agree. It doesn't matter what Microsoft or any other company puts in their EULA if it's illegal to begin with -- and disclaiming all responsibilities for their products' working or not may very well be illegal in your state or country. But no one has had the clout to go up against Microsoft in court over any of that for now. If they keep up their slow slide downhill like this, they'll find themselves being challenged in court over things they used to get away with all the time. That's what happened to IBM, remember? If not, go do some research on IBM's former market dominance and subsequent fall.
I don't think most people even know what apps are on their PC.
As someone who fixes computers for a (partial) living, I have to disagree on that. That was true until about three years ago, I'd say. Now most people running 98 have been running it long enough to know what they're doing. The vast majority don't upgrade simply because they don't need to. Since it still works fine for them, I can see their point. When I get hold of a Win98 box, it's usually because of one piece of hardware going bad. Contrast that with all of the spyware-filled, virused XP boxes I get on a weekly basis.
I think this article is mostly so much wishful thinking, though. What good can Linux do for people running Win98 on older hardware? Unless they're going to be switching to Damn Small Linux, I'd say not much. Tons of hardware support was dropped from the 2.6 kernel, not all of it legacy hardware by any means. I still have a computer with a Via 10/100 ethernet card that worked perfectly with the 2.4 kernel and still works fine with DSL, but no distro with a 2.6 kernel can configure it. That ethernet card is hardly legacy hardware since it came out about the same time as Windows XP. How could you possibly recommend Linux to someone running hardware even older than that?
Now don't get me wrong, I'm a happy Debian-user, but I think the days when Linux was good for older hardware are gone, and the majority of Linux supporters don't seem to have realized this. I'd recommend DesltopBSD over Linux to someone running older hardware, since I don't think DSL is really a newbie-friendly distro.
As to the number being 4% I think that's off as well. I'd say it's much higher than that. I know lots of people still running 98. And as long as their hardware works fine, I'm not going to tell them that they need to upgrade. Non-geeks have other things to spend their money on, like their kids. That's something that geeks seem to have trouble understanding, that not everyone wants to spend a ton of money on the latest and greatest hardware. But most people are like that, and if they bring you a computer wanting a memory upgrade and you try to get them to upgrade the whole system, you're going to lose a customer.
"Dwarves" wasn't the plural for "dwarf", as in the little people, until Tolkien decided it was. In Old English, "dwarfs" was the common plural, hence "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs".
The best resource for genuine pirate-style gaming I've found is GURPS Swashbucklers. It's full of interesting historical information about real pirates (for instance, did you know that "walking the plank" is fictional?). A glossary of genuine pirate-speak is included on one of the ubiquitous GURPS sidebars. I made good use of it and I play D&D, so most of it works with all games.
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Oh, no, the "security through obscurity" argument again on *nix and Windows. May I ask what OS you think is most popular for servers? What OS was the internet built on? By your logic, there would be as many viruses attacking *nix-type OSes because most servers are running thoses OSes. But there's not. If you were right, sites would be going down all the time, since *nix is supposed to be as vulnerable to malware as Windows. Imagine Google going down at least once a week! Or Slashdot, for that matter. But that doesn't happen that often, does it? If *nix Oses were as vulnerable to malware as Windows, the internet likely would be at the level now that it was in the mid-90s, if it hadn't been abadoned altogether since they couldn't keep the servers running. Or do you think script-kiddies and crackers only want to bother home and business users?
People who keep spouting this ignorant argument need to actually learn about computers and computing history. If you did you'd see just how wrong this nonsense is. Yet you see this spiel everywhere.
The fewer the safer? I wouldn't say that -- Active X is a huge vulnerability all by itself. You may be able to disable Active X in IE7 beta but you can't in 6 without 3rd-party software, to my knowledge.
Ask a Japanese schoolgirl.
It's quite amusing to call a dead woman a "possible" false positive. What, she was file sharing songs in Heaven or Hell? I'm sure a case could be made that the copyright laws don't apple there.
Are you Steve Ballmer? Because you sure sound like it, spouting off about how everyone and his brother is pirating Windows. That's why we keep tightening the activation requirements and WGA has to phone home every time you boot! I've used ME (came with my first computer), 98, 2k and XP and I've paid for every single damn one of them. Not only that, but I've built computers for over twenty people, sixteen of which put Windows on them and they gave me their copies of Windows to install. Not only were they legit but some of them hadn't even been taken out of the box they came in. The others, I don't know where they got their copies and I didn't ask, but everybody knows I'm not going to pirate anything for them. That's sixteen out of twenty that weren't pirated, so it shure shoots your statistics all to hell that everyone whose computer didn't come with Windows is pirating their copy. But of course, we're all pirates, aren't we? All of MS's own customers are filthy thieves who should be treated like criminals. And anyone who listens to music on their mp3 player. Or watches a movie on their computer! It's all pirated!
I'm sick of this bullshit, people assuming every damn thing is pirated just because Ballmer and *AAs say so. With the *AAs, they need to stop making excuses and put out some quality content to stop their slide in profits -- they're not making stuff that enough people want, period, and they need to actually get off their lazy asses and get to work. But with MS it's just pure paranoia. They're absolutely no different than my paranoid grandmother, who is convinced that people are constantly stealing from her. Really, go look up information on paranoia and you'll see that Microsoft's constant spiels on how much Windows is pirated sound exactly like that. EXACTLY like that. It's pure paranoia coming from the top of the corporation. I bet Ballmer and Gates believe people are stealing form them all the time besides that too. Not only that, but it shows they hold their own customers and supporters -- like you -- in low regard, believing that we are all grubby little thieves, beneath contempt, that they're forced to endure, so much lower than themselves. Oh, the indignity of being forced to deal with all of us filthy criminals!
Sorry, but I have to I call BS on you r BS-calling. SuSe 9 did this to me after installing nVidia drivers. Without the drivers, it was fine. Reboot after installing drivers, kernel panic. I tried a total of four installations (yes, I'm remarkably stubborn). The nVidia card and its drivers worked great with other distros, though.
Wait, wait... what happened to Singularity?
Also true, but you have to realize that the vast majority of people who touted its stability were upgrading from 98 or even ME. It is definitely far more stable than either ME or 98. 'Course, almost anything is arguably more stable than ME.
Having used both for months, I will tell you what: reliability. XP may be more user-friendly, but the user-friendly components have a tendency to break occasionally. When that happens, they tend to screw up the system until you can fix them. Nothing like that ever happened to me when I used 2k for two years, but it's happened twice in the 6 months I've used XP. I now have XP on this machine and 2k/Debian on my main machine; XP is on the gaming rig.
When the FUD stops flowing out of Redmond, you think all the regular /.ers will be making shit up? More likely, they'll all be going "WTF happened? Was there an eclipse or something? Did I pass out" Have a clue, troll: MS spews out FUD so often, no one has to make up FUD about them. Therein lies the problem with Microsoft.
New games will require DirectX 10 which I believe requires Vista...So how many game companies do you think will make their games DX10-only, trading a much smaller market for over 95% of all Windows-users? Only those who want to lose tons of money and get sued into oblivion by their stock holders...
I'm in North America, and I'd gladly build you a great computer and put Linux or BSD on it. In fact, all of the computers I build come with Linux, BSD or no OS -- I don't have a license to pre-load Windows on them, and since I'm strictly small-time, I don't want to pirate it or pay big for Windows. Problem is, if you're posting on /., you can probably do the same thing yourself...
Why all the Linux talk in this thread? (Note: I'm a Debian user myself.) There's plenty of open source software for Windows. I think that's the best place to start. All you have to do is point people in that direction, explain that it's free, it will remain free and they can freely share it with anyone and everyone, and that it works. Apps like the Gimp (yes, I fully know it's no replacement for PS, but it's better than many other expensive graphics apps), CdEx, Audacity, 7-Zip, open Office, AbiWord, etc., are growing in popularity for a reason. If you get a Windows user using stuff like that and they're the sort of person who is likely to become interested in OSS, then just gett hem on that and then let nature take its course, so to speak.
Very, very true. My first computer in 2001 came with Windows ME and I've been in the anti-MS camp ever since because of that. It was so buggy it was practically unusable, but Win98 worked fine on the same computer. I rarely saw a BSOD after switching to 98. Now that's just pathetic, truth be told. If they had recalled ME and offered 98 or 2k as a replacement I'd have had nothing bad to say about them, but as it is everyone who paid for ME got royally screwed.
More drivers, and devs including more of the drivers that are available instead of just their favorites. (Not a troll, I'm a Debian-user, but the driver situation still sucks in the *nix world.)
They don't care.
Actually, if you think about it, all babies are parasites. This means that nearly all species of mammals are parasites for part of their lives. And then there are in-laws...
As someone who fixes computers for a (partial) living, I have to disagree on that. That was true until about three years ago, I'd say. Now most people running 98 have been running it long enough to know what they're doing. The vast majority don't upgrade simply because they don't need to. Since it still works fine for them, I can see their point. When I get hold of a Win98 box, it's usually because of one piece of hardware going bad. Contrast that with all of the spyware-filled, virused XP boxes I get on a weekly basis.
I think this article is mostly so much wishful thinking, though. What good can Linux do for people running Win98 on older hardware? Unless they're going to be switching to Damn Small Linux, I'd say not much. Tons of hardware support was dropped from the 2.6 kernel, not all of it legacy hardware by any means. I still have a computer with a Via 10/100 ethernet card that worked perfectly with the 2.4 kernel and still works fine with DSL, but no distro with a 2.6 kernel can configure it. That ethernet card is hardly legacy hardware since it came out about the same time as Windows XP. How could you possibly recommend Linux to someone running hardware even older than that?
Now don't get me wrong, I'm a happy Debian-user, but I think the days when Linux was good for older hardware are gone, and the majority of Linux supporters don't seem to have realized this. I'd recommend DesltopBSD over Linux to someone running older hardware, since I don't think DSL is really a newbie-friendly distro.
As to the number being 4% I think that's off as well. I'd say it's much higher than that. I know lots of people still running 98. And as long as their hardware works fine, I'm not going to tell them that they need to upgrade. Non-geeks have other things to spend their money on, like their kids. That's something that geeks seem to have trouble understanding, that not everyone wants to spend a ton of money on the latest and greatest hardware. But most people are like that, and if they bring you a computer wanting a memory upgrade and you try to get them to upgrade the whole system, you're going to lose a customer.
"Dwarves" wasn't the plural for "dwarf", as in the little people, until Tolkien decided it was. In Old English, "dwarfs" was the common plural, hence "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs".
The best resource for genuine pirate-style gaming I've found is GURPS Swashbucklers. It's full of interesting historical information about real pirates (for instance, did you know that "walking the plank" is fictional?). A glossary of genuine pirate-speak is included on one of the ubiquitous GURPS sidebars. I made good use of it and I play D&D, so most of it works with all games.