Re:Why can't they still sell PCs without OS?
on
Leopard Vs. Vista
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· Score: 1
'The PC as a plug and play appliance has been the gold standard in the home and SOHO markets for over twenty-five years.'
I sort of agree with you... but Plug and Play appliance?
The original PC wasn't Plug and Play. I remember having to do quite a lot of 'tweaking' on some of the old programs only 18 or so years ago when I first started programming databases on an old IBM XT machine. Also, we sometimes had to write several autoexec.bat files depending on which software we had to us (as the memory had to be adjusted to have enough spare in either extended or upper memory etc).
At that time, Apples were still pretty much utilised as well. We had an Apple IIe runing Visicalc etc, and the Commodore 64 etc still hadn't quite died off.
In my job prior to that [Studio musician], we were using Mac's as PC's just couldn't do what Mac's and other music friendly computers could do.
Plug and Play only really came in around the time of Win95. [And even that can be debated, as some of the games I own from that era also needed tweaking as they ran on top of DOS and only pretended to run in Win95.]
I figure you might mean that PC's have been the computer of choice [with MS being OS of choice] as IBM did a huge marketing campaign which really got them both into the market in a big way. Calling it Plug and Play really misses out how difficult some programs were to get running in the old days. After all, Mac's were a lot easier to use back then than PC's.
'The DIY install that fails can be a nightmare to diagnose even for the uber-Geek.'
Sorry, have to disagree with this as well. Most Linux operating systems are pretty easy to install now. I've never had a problem loading one ever on any machine I've loaded one on. Of course, that's just simple sorts of things, like setting them up for desktops, as routers or as servers. I have no idea what sort of DIY install with Linux could possibly cause an Uber-Geek to have a nightmare to diagnose, but I'd assume they would be tweaking the system to do something pretty amazing.
If we're talking just the loading of games and other software, I've found most Linux made software has no problems being loaded and run. In fact, some software made for other Unix OS's even ran fine. [But, as Linux is pretty much a Unix flavour, that doesn't surprise me].
For the average joe in the street, I could see them having problems with the simplest of installs. But, most people buy their machines with OS's pre-loaded. Games and other software aren't too hard to install on either Linux or Windows. The average joe on the street doesn't remember the old days of trying to get software to run on an old DOS platform [because desktops weren't that common in the old days]. It could be a worse nightmare, and often there wasn't any help because it was pre-internet days, and trying to get the stuff to work was a matter of either sending a snail-mail letter off and waiting or taking the entire machine in to where you bought the software. Eventually they started to put phone numbers with the software, but most people I know never phoned them, they'd usually ask a tech minded friend to fix things up.
So, I'm not sure what your uber-geek friends are doing to get into a situation where the have a nightmare of an install, but I would be doubtful of it being anything straight forward.
Re:Because there is no enforcement.
on
Leopard Vs. Vista
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
'will also doubt the value of something that comes for free'
That's exactly what happened at the last place I worked. The managers didn't like Linux as it was FREE and they made some statement that they wanted all Linux machines taken off the network. We had to point out that our Network management software was running on a Linux machine, and they'd have to cough up soem cash to replace the machine [plus a few other Linux machines we had around the place].
They decided against us removing the Linux machines, but they made some new rule that we couldn't have any more Linux machines. Their only rational was that FREE = Didn't Work. Needless to say, the mangers were all ex-accountants.
So many Ex-accountant Managers I've met seem to have that rational too. I sometimes wonder how they get to manage IT departments. They have a tendency to overspend on items which are under engineered fo their use.
Re:Because there is no enforcement.
on
Leopard Vs. Vista
·
· Score: 1
I have to agree with you on that. I wonder though, if it is possible for some smaller manufactureres to sell Linux only machines, pre-installed to run a Windows emulator. Then offer some free classes to the buyers to quickly teach them how to install and run windows programs with the emulator.
I know it's a lot more messing about to get out of a Microsoft owned world, but the sales pitch could be that the buyer can run more than just windows software on their machine.
Most people I know have Windows installed just to play most of the games released on the market. After all, they could run Open Office instead of MS Office etc if they switched to Linux,so it isn't as if they're losing that much if a few of the Windows games don't quite run correctly. I actually have quite a lot of Windows games that won't even run with windows correctly.
'This reaffirms advice that states that when the robot uprising finally comes, you should always aim your rocket launcher at the head (or brain nexus).'
Which is why I had my brain nexus transplanted to my arse. Someone blows my head off, I'll just keep on plowing along...
'You may find that it's profitable RIGHT NOW to put solar cells on your roof!'
I guess that depends where you live. I looked into getting solar/wind power for where I worked and the cost came to AUD$14,000 to $16,000 depending on who I went with, and there is a AUD$4,000 subsidy from the Government. (So, about AUD$10,000 all up). This meant that it would take 8 to 10 years for where I work to have actually broken even. [That included us getting money back from feeding electricity back into the grid when we weren't using it].
In the long term, it wasn't going to be proftable for us, as the building we're now in is getting torn down sometime in the next five years [if it doesn't fall down before then].
Getting it for home use would be even less profitable. [But, still take just over 10+ years to break even], and I have no intention of still living in the same area in ten years.
At the beginning of the pice, he does refer to it as an interface. During the piece, he claims the interface disappears, and later on he says 'once again there is no interface', even though he's using what looks like an interface at the top of Google Maps.
So, he sort fo contradicts himself during the talk, but I'd say he means there isn't the usual sort of interface whcih needs to be learned to be used.
It's more an intuitive interface. Even then, I'd assume you'd need to learn something in order to figure out how to get from one application to another.
Still, it's very impressive, even if the term 'no interface' is technically incorrect.
'In my opinion, if its intangible, then it shouldn't really be part of the economy in the first place.'
So, you're saying money shouldn't be part of the economy? After all, the majority of it is now sitting on computers through out the world as 0's and 1's.
Even the coins and notes we may have in our pockets [I have neither at the moment, only a debit card], is not of the real value of it's agreed worth. It's only through social contruction that we as humans agree that money has value. There is no tangible value there, it's only an agreed intangible value of music, etc.
Tomorrow the Government could decide that money is worthless [like they did at the end of WWII for Germany], and all that paper and coinage wouldn't be worth anything. You could look at it and your old bank statement in 50 years and wonder where all yoru money went!:-)
'Quit whinging. My first work experience was six months of grinding uranium ore. By hand. With a mortar and pestle.
Luxury. We had to grind uranium ore in our teeth!'
Luxury that is! Pure Luxury!
When I wa' a lad, we'd 'ave to grind the uranium ore with our own teeth, then when we died from radiation poisoning we'd 'ave to dig our own hole and bury ourselves in it. You tell that to a kid now-a-days, and they won't believe it!
I've found most managers in organisations have no idea about technology either. The fact that most politicians have no idea isn't a big surprise.
In my head I can still hear one IT manager refusing our request for 1GB switches under the grounds that they'd buy us some as soon as we get the 10/100 switches running at 1GB speeds! Ahhhh, memories!
At one place I worked it was pretty well known that certain bosses were reading their workers e-mail. (Including my own boss).
I also knew the Sys Admins & Server Admins were doing it too. Only, I got a bit shocked when some of the NON-Techies started telling me about stuff they'd read in other peoples e-mails. When I asked them how they'd done it, apparently some of the Server Admins had shown them how and set it up to allow them to do it.
So, I was rather upset about that sort of thing. Only, who do you go to? HR in that company basically (like all companies), works for management and NOT for the workers, (I know, because all my complaints to HR about other things had basically been like talking into a void), and management were basically breaking the rules, so I couldn't very well complain to them. Going to the police/law would have been useless, as they would have said it was all just heresay.
Needless to say, I just made sure I never said anything in an e-mail that I didn't want to be common knowledge to the entire company.
The tall ones are called Eloi, and the short ones are called Molochs. [Spelling may differ fromt he HG Wells book, because I can't be bothered looking it up!]:-)
Slashdot Mirror
'The PC as a plug and play appliance has been the gold standard in the home and SOHO markets for over twenty-five years.'
... but Plug and Play appliance?
I sort of agree with you
The original PC wasn't Plug and Play. I remember having to do quite a lot of 'tweaking' on some of the old programs only 18 or so years ago when I first started programming databases on an old IBM XT machine. Also, we sometimes had to write several autoexec.bat files depending on which software we had to us (as the memory had to be adjusted to have enough spare in either extended or upper memory etc).
At that time, Apples were still pretty much utilised as well. We had an Apple IIe runing Visicalc etc, and the Commodore 64 etc still hadn't quite died off.
In my job prior to that [Studio musician], we were using Mac's as PC's just couldn't do what Mac's and other music friendly computers could do.
Plug and Play only really came in around the time of Win95. [And even that can be debated, as some of the games I own from that era also needed tweaking as they ran on top of DOS and only pretended to run in Win95.]
I figure you might mean that PC's have been the computer of choice [with MS being OS of choice] as IBM did a huge marketing campaign which really got them both into the market in a big way. Calling it Plug and Play really misses out how difficult some programs were to get running in the old days. After all, Mac's were a lot easier to use back then than PC's.
'The DIY install that fails can be a nightmare to diagnose even for the uber-Geek.'
Sorry, have to disagree with this as well. Most Linux operating systems are pretty easy to install now. I've never had a problem loading one ever on any machine I've loaded one on. Of course, that's just simple sorts of things, like setting them up for desktops, as routers or as servers. I have no idea what sort of DIY install with Linux could possibly cause an Uber-Geek to have a nightmare to diagnose, but I'd assume they would be tweaking the system to do something pretty amazing.
If we're talking just the loading of games and other software, I've found most Linux made software has no problems being loaded and run. In fact, some software made for other Unix OS's even ran fine. [But, as Linux is pretty much a Unix flavour, that doesn't surprise me].
For the average joe in the street, I could see them having problems with the simplest of installs. But, most people buy their machines with OS's pre-loaded. Games and other software aren't too hard to install on either Linux or Windows. The average joe on the street doesn't remember the old days of trying to get software to run on an old DOS platform [because desktops weren't that common in the old days]. It could be a worse nightmare, and often there wasn't any help because it was pre-internet days, and trying to get the stuff to work was a matter of either sending a snail-mail letter off and waiting or taking the entire machine in to where you bought the software. Eventually they started to put phone numbers with the software, but most people I know never phoned them, they'd usually ask a tech minded friend to fix things up.
So, I'm not sure what your uber-geek friends are doing to get into a situation where the have a nightmare of an install, but I would be doubtful of it being anything straight forward.
'will also doubt the value of something that comes for free'
That's exactly what happened at the last place I worked. The managers didn't like Linux as it was FREE and they made some statement that they wanted all Linux machines taken off the network. We had to point out that our Network management software was running on a Linux machine, and they'd have to cough up soem cash to replace the machine [plus a few other Linux machines we had around the place].
They decided against us removing the Linux machines, but they made some new rule that we couldn't have any more Linux machines. Their only rational was that FREE = Didn't Work. Needless to say, the mangers were all ex-accountants.
So many Ex-accountant Managers I've met seem to have that rational too. I sometimes wonder how they get to manage IT departments. They have a tendency to overspend on items which are under engineered fo their use.
I have to agree with you on that. I wonder though, if it is possible for some smaller manufactureres to sell Linux only machines, pre-installed to run a Windows emulator. Then offer some free classes to the buyers to quickly teach them how to install and run windows programs with the emulator. I know it's a lot more messing about to get out of a Microsoft owned world, but the sales pitch could be that the buyer can run more than just windows software on their machine. Most people I know have Windows installed just to play most of the games released on the market. After all, they could run Open Office instead of MS Office etc if they switched to Linux,so it isn't as if they're losing that much if a few of the Windows games don't quite run correctly. I actually have quite a lot of Windows games that won't even run with windows correctly.
I think that was how the froze Han Solo in the carbonite Nanotubes too!
'So swords are a series of tubes too?'
Of course, how else do they breathe?
'This reaffirms advice that states that when the robot uprising finally comes, you should always aim your rocket launcher at the head (or brain nexus).'
...
Which is why I had my brain nexus transplanted to my arse. Someone blows my head off, I'll just keep on plowing along
'That would explain why we have so many pasty-skinned people who shy away from Sun here nowadays...'
Oh darn, someone left the IT departments door unlocked and they've escaped again!
Global warming. Melt the ice caps, the sharks can swim there. :-)
'You may find that it's profitable RIGHT NOW to put solar cells on your roof!'
I guess that depends where you live. I looked into getting solar/wind power for where I worked and the cost came to AUD$14,000 to $16,000 depending on who I went with, and there is a AUD$4,000 subsidy from the Government. (So, about AUD$10,000 all up). This meant that it would take 8 to 10 years for where I work to have actually broken even. [That included us getting money back from feeding electricity back into the grid when we weren't using it].
In the long term, it wasn't going to be proftable for us, as the building we're now in is getting torn down sometime in the next five years [if it doesn't fall down before then].
Getting it for home use would be even less profitable. [But, still take just over 10+ years to break even], and I have no intention of still living in the same area in ten years.
Australians donated over a BILLION Dollars Australian to the Boxing Day Tsunami. As well as sending our navy and army in to help clean up.
December 26th. That's why they call it the Boxing Day Tsunami in our part of the world!
Madonna's already bought her emergency food supply! :-)
At the beginning of the pice, he does refer to it as an interface. During the piece, he claims the interface disappears, and later on he says 'once again there is no interface', even though he's using what looks like an interface at the top of Google Maps.
So, he sort fo contradicts himself during the talk, but I'd say he means there isn't the usual sort of interface whcih needs to be learned to be used.
It's more an intuitive interface. Even then, I'd assume you'd need to learn something in order to figure out how to get from one application to another.
Still, it's very impressive, even if the term 'no interface' is technically incorrect.
'Lets hope (insert mythical deity here) turns up real soon then.'
:-)
With my luck, it'd be the Great Cthulu and he'll eat who ever is left.
'In my opinion, if its intangible, then it shouldn't really be part of the economy in the first place.'
:-)
So, you're saying money shouldn't be part of the economy? After all, the majority of it is now sitting on computers through out the world as 0's and 1's.
Even the coins and notes we may have in our pockets [I have neither at the moment, only a debit card], is not of the real value of it's agreed worth. It's only through social contruction that we as humans agree that money has value. There is no tangible value there, it's only an agreed intangible value of music, etc.
Tomorrow the Government could decide that money is worthless [like they did at the end of WWII for Germany], and all that paper and coinage wouldn't be worth anything. You could look at it and your old bank statement in 50 years and wonder where all yoru money went!
'Quit whinging. My first work experience was six months of grinding uranium ore. By hand. With a mortar and pestle.
Luxury. We had to grind uranium ore in our teeth!'
Luxury that is! Pure Luxury!
When I wa' a lad, we'd 'ave to grind the uranium ore with our own teeth, then when we died from radiation poisoning we'd 'ave to dig our own hole and bury ourselves in it. You tell that to a kid now-a-days, and they won't believe it!
I've found most managers in organisations have no idea about technology either. The fact that most politicians have no idea isn't a big surprise.
In my head I can still hear one IT manager refusing our request for 1GB switches under the grounds that they'd buy us some as soon as we get the 10/100 switches running at 1GB speeds! Ahhhh, memories!
'...rationale will set in that it cannot be done, so it's deemed impossible.'
They said it couldn't be done,
He said, 'There's nothing to it'
And he tried this thing that couldn't be done,
And found he couldn't do it!
At one place I worked it was pretty well known that certain bosses were reading their workers e-mail. (Including my own boss).
I also knew the Sys Admins & Server Admins were doing it too. Only, I got a bit shocked when some of the NON-Techies started telling me about stuff they'd read in other peoples e-mails. When I asked them how they'd done it, apparently some of the Server Admins had shown them how and set it up to allow them to do it.
So, I was rather upset about that sort of thing. Only, who do you go to? HR in that company basically (like all companies), works for management and NOT for the workers, (I know, because all my complaints to HR about other things had basically been like talking into a void), and management were basically breaking the rules, so I couldn't very well complain to them. Going to the police/law would have been useless, as they would have said it was all just heresay.
Needless to say, I just made sure I never said anything in an e-mail that I didn't want to be common knowledge to the entire company.
We'll just substitute some frog DNA into the mix. What's the worst that could happen?
I was ignorant to that fact!
The tall ones are called Eloi, and the short ones are called Molochs. [Spelling may differ fromt he HG Wells book, because I can't be bothered looking it up!] :-)
'I guess we should've realized she was a fake when she promised us free studio time and said she loved our music.'
:-)
They must be pretty bad to suggest that someone who loves their music is a fake.
Good thing they fixed it with an inanimate carbon rod! :-)
My Geek Wallet says 'Bad Mother Hacker'.