OS sales pre-windows are irrelevent because they would be proprietary UNIX OS's, and are NOT the same as x86 OS's. Most x86 OS's at the time were free
That neatly forgets Digital Research's CP/M-86 and DR-DOS, IBM OS/2, and the fact that both IBM and Microsoft charged full retail price for PC-DOS and MS-DOS boxed versions from 1.0 to 6.22. They were not free. They still aren't free even today, long after being abandoned.
As for the rest of the rant, it's a bit misguided. Microsoft was indeed responsible at least in part for bringing computers to the masses. Early on in the IBM PC series' history, no OS capable of running on an open and cloneable hardware standard was more popular than Microsoft's at the time. So as IBM clones caught on and became PC compatibles and now just PCs, MS rode the wave and actually drove PC sales: MS-DOS and Microsoft Windows became the lingua franca of operating systems, reassuring novices and even luddites that their new home PCs would work with everything.
Windows: It works; easy to install, easy to use, easy to update
After 15 years trying to believe that, using every version from 2.0 to XP, my experience says different: Windows works only sometimes, and it often depends on the phase of the moon and the alignment of the planets. A product with notoriously problematic installs, for which one can do nothing but pray, is not easy to install. (Oh, wait, your copy came pre-installed, right?) Lucky, I'll grant, but not easy. A product that fails in ever more creative ways through nothing more than regular use is not easy to use. The only thing Windows has going for it is the ease of updating, but even that's hit-and-miss as far as creating unforseen conflicts and interactions is concerned.
Linux: It sometimes works; install is hell on some of them (gentoo?), it would be waaay to hard for non-technical people to use, installing extra hardware or software features often requires recompiling the kernel, not something an ordinary user wants to do, and the list just goes on...
Even the worst distro works consistently once it's made to work at all. If distros like Gentoo and Slackware are your only exposure to Linux, your experience with Linux is greatly skewed. Try a few of the modern home desktop distros like Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Linspire, and Mepis, and quit pretending that intermediate and expert distros are meant for novice home users. Recompiling the kernel is something meant only for source-based distros such as Gentoo; with most distros, new features are as simple as installing a new pre-compiled kernel or module, and that's as easy as installing a new game or toy program. Linux is definitely ready for the home, but only if you choose one meant for home users; choosing an advanced Linux distro for home use is like choosing Windows Advanced Server Datacenter Edition for a simple home computer.
Mac: easy to use, expensive as hell
I agree. If the Macintosh ever was "the computer for the rest of us," it certainly isn't priced like it is.
Unix: see linux
See Linux, which, by the way, is only crap if you use the wrong tool for the wrong job.
How in God's great universe did you get a refund for your CDs? No one within driving range of me does anything but same-title exchanges and sealed returns.
Not ready for the desktop, my tail. Linspire, Mepis, and a few other *nix distros are easier to install, easier to use, easier to expand, and a heck of a lot easier to secure and update -- even for the average joe -- than anything Microsoft has. The only one who comes close to being as ready for the desktop is Apple's Mac OS X. Asa's remarks are grossly uninformed.
A new study has shown that the previous study on the subject was flawed and reached an inaccurate conclusion. The next study scheduled is anticipated to show this new study as flawed and inaccurate in its conclusion, thus reinforcing the initial assumtion and ironically contradicting itself. Upon being reached for comment, all respondents promptly suffered violent seizures as their brains clawed their way out of their skulls.
I actually had to do this when I was working for a Met-Life agent (I was young and very naive at the time), cold-calling the entire phone book during downtimes, before the Internet really took off. It was an experience I don't ever want to repeat. Now, thanks to the 'Net, agents are at least a bit smarter about that, although if the insurance industry is still the worst then not smarter by much. Thankfully, a career in insurance is one I very quickly gave up.
Print head in the printer itself? That's been around since the days of dot matrix and daisy wheel printers, hasn't it?
I guess we can blame Lexmark for taking the print head entirely out of the printer and into the cartridge: if they didn't invent it, they certainly mastered it.
And now putting the print head back into the printer is inventive. Go fig.
Public schools need to teach what really matters: how to survive, thrive, and prosper in our civilization.
They need to teach how to think well.
They need to teach math at least up to calculus by graduation. They need to teach how to solve math problems without the aid of an electronic calculator.
They need to teach how to use a variety of computing devices: electronic calculators, slide rules, and the abacus. Batteries go dead a lot more often than slides or beads break.
They need to teach how to read: magazines, newspapers, Shakespeare, Twain, contracts, and most importantly their own diplomas.
They need to teach how to write: essays, reviews, stories, journals, proposals, critiques, complaints, and well-formed solutions.
It's amazing how frequently the skills of Readin', 'Ritin', and 'Rithmetic need to be used: how transparent those skills are when applied well, and how obviously lacking they are when applied poorly.
They need to teach basic history. Our own state and federal governments are in danger of repeating the mistakes that drove us to rebel against the mightiest empire the world has ever seen and found this still-great nation of ours.
They need to teach basic geography. New Mexico is one of the Fifty, bordered by Texas, Oklahoma, Colorado, Arizona, and on the Four Corners by Utah. New Mexico is not a third-world country somewhere in South America.
They need to stop teaching that 2+2 may equal 5 if the answer 4 hurts anyone's feelings, poor insensitive clods.
They need to stop teaching that everything happening to the environment is bad, and that it's always Man's fault, even the things that happened before Man existed.
They need to stop teaching material that is impossible to apply in daily life and stop neglecting to teach material that will turn children into self-sufficient, well-to-do adults.
In short, public schools need to teach what most private schools have taught for the longest time, and what public schools used to teach before political correctness throttled our education system.
A bloody brilliant string of links that spell out a shaving cream jingle. But yes, it does end in something that shouldn't be seen, not even on Slashdot.
On the plus side, the picture it's based on will, when viewed by any man questioning his heterosexuality, scare him straight for a very long time. http://bash.org/?42262
"...And in other news tonight, the nine attourneys for Sauron descended the steps of the courthouse in Minas Morgul to deliver a press conference. In it, they announced that the case against Sauron has been dismissed on the grounds that the plantiff's lawyers have all been either slain, bent to the Dark Lord's will, or checked into a mental institution in neighboring Osgiliath, and therefore failed to appear in court on time."
Actually, yes it was. It was hard because, just like not everyone uses Mac OS or Windows, not everyone usesDebian. (If it's any consolation to the bruise your ego just took, I don't use RPM-based distros.)
arielmt@cleopatra:~$ augur grimoire | grep -i aac
faac
arielmt@cleopatra:~$ augur what faac
Long description for faac:
faac is an implementation of MPEG-2 and NBC/MPEG-4.
faac is an implementation of a part of one or more MPEG-2 NBC/MPEG-4
Audio tools as specified by the MPEG-2 NBC/MPEG-4 Audio standard.
arielmt@cleopatra:~$
Do you see AAC in there? Aside from the terse name, I don't. I use Deb-based distros now, but not at the time. At the time, when I ripped my collection, AAC was more underreported than even Ogg. It was MP3, WMA, Real (which, as an aside, is the least real-sounding of all), or Ogg. AAC was basically nothing until iTunes and the iPod.
So you can see, I hope, how I could've missed your informative correction. Thank you for the correction.
ZoneAlarm makes a very good client-side firewall but a very poor server-side firewall. It needs to be monitored, as it tends to hold up all network traffic on all ports if one of its alerts pops up. And on a remotely monitored server, that's indistinguishable from a DoS.
I recommend suspending a voodoo doll above each server. In my experience, UFO-catchers like Skuld (Oh My Goddess!), Tux the Penguin (or Cozy Heart Penguin the Care Bear Cousin, in the absence of a genuine Tux), and/or the Mozilla dragon (or Firefoxy). Take as much care of the voodoo dolls as you do the servers, and hope no one tries taking over the servers by way of the Web browser client, media player client, instant messenger client, or any of the host of other clients installed on and unremovable from the servers.:)
First, pardon my ignorance but is there a RAW->AAC encoder for Linux? I didn't see one when I ripped my CD collection. Second, this is the same kind of debate as the one between MP3 and WMA: WMA is technically superior but forever a closed, non-standard format. Finally, Ogg is the same geek, "no where" format (as you put it) that MP3 was five years ago. I suppose today's flooded MP3 player market appeals to geeks only, right? Even my most non-geek, "what's a microsoft?" cousin wants a digital music player, one that works with MP3, WMA, AAC, and Ogg, all purely, simply, and without DRM nonsense.
I want a portable music player that plays Ogg Vorbis as easily as it plays MP3 and WMA. I have a iRiver instead of an iPod for precisely that reason. And I don't feel like trying to re-rip my CD collection or convert between lossy formats. When will Apple support.ogg on the iPod, or will they? Any player that doesn't is a non-playing paperweight as far as my ability to listen to my own music is concerned.
Slashdot Mirror
OS sales pre-windows are irrelevent because they would be proprietary UNIX OS's, and are NOT the same as x86 OS's. Most x86 OS's at the time were free
That neatly forgets Digital Research's CP/M-86 and DR-DOS, IBM OS/2, and the fact that both IBM and Microsoft charged full retail price for PC-DOS and MS-DOS boxed versions from 1.0 to 6.22. They were not free. They still aren't free even today, long after being abandoned.
As for the rest of the rant, it's a bit misguided. Microsoft was indeed responsible at least in part for bringing computers to the masses. Early on in the IBM PC series' history, no OS capable of running on an open and cloneable hardware standard was more popular than Microsoft's at the time. So as IBM clones caught on and became PC compatibles and now just PCs, MS rode the wave and actually drove PC sales: MS-DOS and Microsoft Windows became the lingua franca of operating systems, reassuring novices and even luddites that their new home PCs would work with everything.
Windows: It works; easy to install, easy to use, easy to update
After 15 years trying to believe that, using every version from 2.0 to XP, my experience says different: Windows works only sometimes, and it often depends on the phase of the moon and the alignment of the planets. A product with notoriously problematic installs, for which one can do nothing but pray, is not easy to install. (Oh, wait, your copy came pre-installed, right?) Lucky, I'll grant, but not easy. A product that fails in ever more creative ways through nothing more than regular use is not easy to use. The only thing Windows has going for it is the ease of updating, but even that's hit-and-miss as far as creating unforseen conflicts and interactions is concerned.
Linux: It sometimes works; install is hell on some of them (gentoo?), it would be waaay to hard for non-technical people to use, installing extra hardware or software features often requires recompiling the kernel, not something an ordinary user wants to do, and the list just goes on...
Even the worst distro works consistently once it's made to work at all. If distros like Gentoo and Slackware are your only exposure to Linux, your experience with Linux is greatly skewed. Try a few of the modern home desktop distros like Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Linspire, and Mepis, and quit pretending that intermediate and expert distros are meant for novice home users. Recompiling the kernel is something meant only for source-based distros such as Gentoo; with most distros, new features are as simple as installing a new pre-compiled kernel or module, and that's as easy as installing a new game or toy program. Linux is definitely ready for the home, but only if you choose one meant for home users; choosing an advanced Linux distro for home use is like choosing Windows Advanced Server Datacenter Edition for a simple home computer.
Mac: easy to use, expensive as hell
I agree. If the Macintosh ever was "the computer for the rest of us," it certainly isn't priced like it is.
Unix: see linux
See Linux, which, by the way, is only crap if you use the wrong tool for the wrong job.
How in God's great universe did you get a refund for your CDs? No one within driving range of me does anything but same-title exchanges and sealed returns.
Not ready for the desktop, my tail. Linspire, Mepis, and a few other *nix distros are easier to install, easier to use, easier to expand, and a heck of a lot easier to secure and update -- even for the average joe -- than anything Microsoft has. The only one who comes close to being as ready for the desktop is Apple's Mac OS X. Asa's remarks are grossly uninformed.
A new study has shown that the previous study on the subject was flawed and reached an inaccurate conclusion. The next study scheduled is anticipated to show this new study as flawed and inaccurate in its conclusion, thus reinforcing the initial assumtion and ironically contradicting itself. Upon being reached for comment, all respondents promptly suffered violent seizures as their brains clawed their way out of their skulls.
You never know who else is wasting time at work: http://bash.org/?258908
Maybe start cold-calling: "Good morning Mr Anderson, this is Smith from Surely Insurance, we're wondering if you have a car accident today?"
It's an Agent! And the worst kind, an insurance Agent! They cut the hardline and replaced it with cold calls! We gotta find another exit, fast!
I actually had to do this when I was working for a Met-Life agent (I was young and very naive at the time), cold-calling the entire phone book during downtimes, before the Internet really took off. It was an experience I don't ever want to repeat. Now, thanks to the 'Net, agents are at least a bit smarter about that, although if the insurance industry is still the worst then not smarter by much. Thankfully, a career in insurance is one I very quickly gave up.
How about a nice game of chess?
Et tu, Joshua?
Print head in the printer itself? That's been around since the days of dot matrix and daisy wheel printers, hasn't it?
I guess we can blame Lexmark for taking the print head entirely out of the printer and into the cartridge: if they didn't invent it, they certainly mastered it.
And now putting the print head back into the printer is inventive. Go fig.
Public schools need to teach what really matters: how to survive, thrive, and prosper in our civilization.
They need to teach how to think well.
They need to teach math at least up to calculus by graduation. They need to teach how to solve math problems without the aid of an electronic calculator.
They need to teach how to use a variety of computing devices: electronic calculators, slide rules, and the abacus. Batteries go dead a lot more often than slides or beads break.
They need to teach how to read: magazines, newspapers, Shakespeare, Twain, contracts, and most importantly their own diplomas.
They need to teach how to write: essays, reviews, stories, journals, proposals, critiques, complaints, and well-formed solutions.
It's amazing how frequently the skills of Readin', 'Ritin', and 'Rithmetic need to be used: how transparent those skills are when applied well, and how obviously lacking they are when applied poorly.
They need to teach basic history. Our own state and federal governments are in danger of repeating the mistakes that drove us to rebel against the mightiest empire the world has ever seen and found this still-great nation of ours.
They need to teach basic geography. New Mexico is one of the Fifty, bordered by Texas, Oklahoma, Colorado, Arizona, and on the Four Corners by Utah. New Mexico is not a third-world country somewhere in South America.
They need to stop teaching that 2+2 may equal 5 if the answer 4 hurts anyone's feelings, poor insensitive clods.
They need to stop teaching that everything happening to the environment is bad, and that it's always Man's fault, even the things that happened before Man existed.
They need to stop teaching material that is impossible to apply in daily life and stop neglecting to teach material that will turn children into self-sufficient, well-to-do adults.
In short, public schools need to teach what most private schools have taught for the longest time, and what public schools used to teach before political correctness throttled our education system.
Yup.
Only a dollar? Wow, makes those "SPAM: OEM scammer specials" look downright prohibitive.
It's an addiction.
No, they're currently engaged by SCO against IBM. Close enough for government work.
A bloody brilliant string of links that spell out a shaving cream jingle. But yes, it does end in something that shouldn't be seen, not even on Slashdot.
On the plus side, the picture it's based on will, when viewed by any man questioning his heterosexuality, scare him straight for a very long time. http://bash.org/?42262
"...And in other news tonight, the nine attourneys for Sauron descended the steps of the courthouse in Minas Morgul to deliver a press conference. In it, they announced that the case against Sauron has been dismissed on the grounds that the plantiff's lawyers have all been either slain, bent to the Dark Lord's will, or checked into a mental institution in neighboring Osgiliath, and therefore failed to appear in court on time."
He tooks the precious from us, he did, your honor! The filthy hobbitses took it from us! *gollum!*
Transparent aterms on WindowMaker, can't get a much better combination of speed and eyecandy than that... :)
(Except, of course, with other lightweight window managers like xfce and icewm.)
That was hard wasn't it
Actually, yes it was. It was hard because, just like not everyone uses Mac OS or Windows, not everyone uses Debian . (If it's any consolation to the bruise your ego just took, I don't use RPM-based distros.)
Do you see AAC in there? Aside from the terse name, I don't. I use Deb-based distros now, but not at the time. At the time, when I ripped my collection, AAC was more underreported than even Ogg. It was MP3, WMA, Real (which, as an aside, is the least real-sounding of all), or Ogg. AAC was basically nothing until iTunes and the iPod.
So you can see, I hope, how I could've missed your informative correction. Thank you for the correction.
Glad to see they listened, at least as far as the pop-up alerts go. I stand corrected.
ZoneAlarm makes a very good client-side firewall but a very poor server-side firewall. It needs to be monitored, as it tends to hold up all network traffic on all ports if one of its alerts pops up. And on a remotely monitored server, that's indistinguishable from a DoS.
(Unless ZoneLabs changed something recently.)
I recommend suspending a voodoo doll above each server. In my experience, UFO-catchers like Skuld (Oh My Goddess!), Tux the Penguin (or Cozy Heart Penguin the Care Bear Cousin, in the absence of a genuine Tux), and/or the Mozilla dragon (or Firefoxy). Take as much care of the voodoo dolls as you do the servers, and hope no one tries taking over the servers by way of the Web browser client, media player client, instant messenger client, or any of the host of other clients installed on and unremovable from the servers. :)
First, pardon my ignorance but is there a RAW->AAC encoder for Linux? I didn't see one when I ripped my CD collection. Second, this is the same kind of debate as the one between MP3 and WMA: WMA is technically superior but forever a closed, non-standard format. Finally, Ogg is the same geek, "no where" format (as you put it) that MP3 was five years ago. I suppose today's flooded MP3 player market appeals to geeks only, right? Even my most non-geek, "what's a microsoft?" cousin wants a digital music player, one that works with MP3, WMA, AAC, and Ogg, all purely, simply, and without DRM nonsense.
I want a portable music player that plays Ogg Vorbis as easily as it plays MP3 and WMA. I have a iRiver instead of an iPod for precisely that reason. And I don't feel like trying to re-rip my CD collection or convert between lossy formats. When will Apple support .ogg on the iPod, or will they? Any player that doesn't is a non-playing paperweight as far as my ability to listen to my own music is concerned.