Everyone marked it funny but it should have been insightful. After playing with it a couple of months and talking with my customers....what does it offer REALLY? what does win 8 bring to the table except being a "LOL I iz a cellphone LOL" PITA UI?
Its "faster boot time" is nothing but a classic MSFT cheat, in this case its more like a wake from hibernate than an actual boot, the UI is frankly crap on a cracker if you're not using touch which means a good 90%+ of machines out there are gonna suck with it, the "easy reinstall" is kinda pointless since I haven't found a reason to actually NEED to reinstall Win 7 with my customers, hell the only real positive I could find was the overhaul of Windows services but honestly that was such a "WTF are they thinking?" that should have been done years ago and certainly isn't worth putting up with "LOL I can haz touch?" MS Bob UI!
If you use Windows for work or play there really isn't a point in having Windows 8 unless you are going for a touchscreen device, there really isn't. You look at the reviews and they all say the same thing "Windows 8 is pointless" and I have to agree. I have gone through every MSFT OS since Win 3.x, including clunkers like WinME and WinVista but I can say without a doubt that Win 8 has to be the worst Windows I've ever been forced to use. At least with Vista you could kill UAC and tweak it into a halfway usable OS, with ME if you had a Win98SE disc you could build a frankenstein of the two and actually have a decent OS, whereas unless you are buying it on a tablet or cellphone Win 8 is a boat anchor on your workflow.
So just skip it, no point in dealing with Metro or Tiles or whatever they call it next week, unless you just really desire having your PC feel like it is a supergigantic smartphone
USB would be just the most retarded way to go for something like this, its too slow and he's gonna be swapping worse than when we used to have to back up things to CDs.
I'm guessing he's going USB because he don't have the cash to buy a NAS of that size but you can always jury rig you a NAS, its really not hard. We did something similar at the last shop I worked at when the boss scored a ton of SCSI drives at an auction and ended up with nearly a Tb NAS when the average HDD was 40Gb. Here is how you do it..
You take a couple of full size towers, bigger the better, preferably twinkies as it makes the job a LOT easier. You strip 'em to the frames and use a couple of spot welds to make them into one giant case along with another couple of weld to mount a shitload of drive cages into the case. Then you take a cheap server or even desktop board, all that matters is it has a shitload of PCI slots which you fill with controller cards, SCSI in our case but SATA today, mount the board along with a big PSU to feed the drives and voila! One big ass DIY NAS unit that can hold a huge pile of drives. Just to finish our white trash conversion we tied on a Walmart box fan to keep the sucker cool and stuck it in a corner, worked great.
The only software that I think would work with USB is Paragon Drive Backup as you can have it split by just about any size you want. They also have their own Linux based recovery media but damned if i know if you can get the software as a Linux installer, never ran into that situation to need it in that way. I know its worked great for me making OS images and backing up files and folders onto USB drives but if you're gonna be splitting to a ton of little drives then you are just gonna have to swap, no way out of that. If you want to fill the drives up then set Paragon to a small size, say 700Mb, but good fucking luck checking your backup as the amount of swapping you're gonna do is just insane.
Look any way you slice it Nokia is dead and they were dead before Elop ever walked in the door, why? Because their big business is about to go the way of the 8-track, that's why. Nokia made their money on dumbphones and we can all see the writing on the wall, as the chips drop dumbphones will disappear. Hell Walmart has begun offering smartphones on their cheapo prepaid plans at $125, when that gets down to $50 that's it, its over.
Put yourself in the shoes of Elop, you walk through the door and the business is totally fractured, you got no less than THREE different phone OSes, none of which is compatible with the others, Symbian, MeeGo/Maemo, and the Java based one I can't remember the name of. Now the company couldn't buy WebOS because they couldn't throw a billion like HP, Apple sure as fuck ain't selling them iOS, Android is right out because Samsung and HTC do it better than anybody and the market is flooded with Android phones already, and no product you have will be able to compete for at least a year and a half and that is if everything goes perfectly. So he took the money from MSFT and hoped like hell they knew WTF they were doing with WinPhone.
Was it a good call? Nope but frankly i don't see what other call the guy could make, Android would make them an also ran, a third or fourth string player at best compared to Samsung and HTC, and MeeGo/Maemo simply wasn't done and was already behind. When you are in the same market as Apple you can't go half assed which is what MeeGo would have been if he shoved it out the door so the guy literally was out of options. He had no OS, a market that was dying, and was rapidly running out of time. I don't see where the guy had a choice really, its not like he could wave a magic wand and suddenly make MeeGo/Maemo into an iPhone killer, it just wasn't anywhere near done.
The bigger question is this: Why are we trying to pretend its a century ago? There was a reason for having heavy math then, there is simply no reason other than a few specialized fields now. It'd be like giving students a half a dozen years of calligraphy classes while completely ignoring a good 80%+ of all our interaction is done now with keyboards.
The simple fact is the computers do it better, after all when you come right down to it all computers are glorified number pushers. When you figure up the odds of the average person getting the math wrong VS the computer getting the math wrong it just seems stupid as hell to push for anything beyond the basic unless that student is gonna be going into a field where its required like physics.
I just think we could be giving the kids more of an education if we began to specialize during HS. Have programming classes, business classes, and for those that truly wish to go into something where heavy math is required then they should have that option, probably at a magnet school where you can have teachers that can really give them some serious math education.
Because as it is now we simply waste that time on kids that don't want it, won't use it in their careers, and will just do whatever it takes to get the class over with. Hell from what I've seen math is like sports in either you have a math brain or you don't, those that have it will pursue careers that let them use it, others will avoid it like the clap.
No I think it just shows FOSS as what it is at its heart...a bazillion hackers jerking off because they think they are smarter than everybody else. that is why you have a bazillion text editors, programmers use text editors and they all think they are better than the other guy. Ego eee-eee-eeego, ego come and it won't go away...
But there is a REASON why they call it "re-inventing the wheel' because that is EXACTLY what it is, its wasting time and effort doing something that a billion before you have already done, no different and no better than some VB GUI class project.
If you wanna compete then compete, if you don't? Then STFU and quit whining that nobody wants your class project OS. Whether you like it or not your COMPETITION, and that is again EXACTLY what they are, are sinking hundreds of millions into making things ever easier, simpler, and more reliable. Both OSX and windows have gotten to the point that they can run million dollar software while at the same time your average 7 year old can do basic tasks in either one.
But you CANNOT compete with that with another text editor, okay? You cannot compete with that with everybody "doing their own thang" and creating a bunch of half assed GUIs and leaning on CLI as a crutch. You either bring your A game or GTFO the field and that is that. The world is NOT made of hackers, inside Suzy the checkout girl is NOT a bash programmer waiting to come out, okay?
If you want to be a programmer hobbyist toy? I have no problem with that, just join Haiku and the others and be happy with what you have. But quit fucking lying to yourself and the general public that "Linux is ready for the desktop" when its an unfinished mess, alright? You're not fooling anybody and frankly as far as quality goes your OS shouldn't even be counted in the same league as Win2K, a 12 year old abandoned OS.
Glad to help, and don't forget advertising, every little bit helps when you are starting out, everything from any trade papers in your area to an old fashioned newspaper ad in the business section, you just gotta get out there and get your name known.
Believe me, once you've done a few of those jobs and get a rep you'll be good to go. And I bet if you search there are still some mom & pop shops around, if not in the city in the small towns nearby, and they're good for getting the word out.
And I know what you're talking about as i was once too a white collar IT desk jockey, trying to do too much with too little with bosses that were always looking to fuck IT but then my kids gave me a bit of an intervention and i got the hell out. I may not make as much, and it may be swamped one week and slow the next, but at least with a little shop i actually get to help folks who are actually grateful for it and listen to me which is more than i can say about those damned PHBs with MBAs, Masters of Being Assholes.
Oh you want to watch 'em foam like rabid dogs, then talk about whether BSD should be counted like GPL under the FOSS banner and watch the fireworks!
But lets face it, the whole FOSS movement is fractured all to hell anyway, that is why you have 50 text editors, a bazillion distros, everybody reinvents the wheel rather than learn to get along. Kinda sad really, if all that energy would have been put into say 3 distros, one for home, one for enterprise, and one for mobile? You'd probably end up with an OS so damned good it would smack the shit right out of Ballmer and Cook but as long as everyone is bickering there is no worry about that.
Dude i buy from GOG okay? But lets not kid ourselves, they have MAYBE 20% good games and the rest? Deep fried tampons. Yes graphics don't make the game, got the original Deus Ex along with the sequels and all the DLC for $15 on the Steam sale so i know its good.
But you could buy every decent game GOG has and still have change left of $1k dude. Just because something is old don't make it good, a shitty game is a shitty game. And whether you want to accept it or not games have gotten a LOT better since Deus Ex and if you refuse to buy anything but DRM free frankly you might as well stick with Plants VS Zombies and other "casual" games because all the good shit? you ain't getting it. Bioshock? Excellent (GFWL), HL series? Excellent (Steam), Saints Row series? Incredibly fun (Steam), Just Cause II one of the best sandboxes EVAR, FEAR 1&2 (the third is gears of Fear wallkisser edition but since I paid $8 on steam who cares) the Max Paynes...
Hell I could go on all day, but why bother. If you want to be a zealot about something? Be a zealot, knock yourself out dude. You're not hurting me, who has more games than I could ever play and can jump into a game with my kids just by popping up a Steam chat, you're sure as hell aren't hurting the game publishers a damned bit, who are counting their ever larger piles of money, and old Gabe at Valve isn't gonna shed any tears if you don't want to play anything but a handful of good games and a bunch of old crap.
Hell if it makes you feel better, why not look at it as a fucking rental, huh? At the insanely dirt cheap prices you get on Steam frankly you couldn't rent the games on the X360 and you can play them as long as you want. I have not paid more than $20 for a game in the 4 years I've been on Steam, AAMOF the most I paid for a single game was $12 for Just Cause II and that was only because it came with all the DLC. At those prices if Valve goes tits up (highly unlikely) I think I can afford the 20 minutes it'd take to download the fricking cracks, don't you?
And until the day that doom scenario that will never happen happens i get games cheaper than Amazon, bundles, free chat and matchmaking, no MP bullshit, i can gift a prezzie to my kids in less than 5 minutes, I'm getting a hell of a lot more from Valve than what Valve is taking from me, by a pretty large amount.
If you want to deny yourself fine dude, me i got a kick ass lotsa meat pizza, some ice cold tea to wash it down with, and over a dozen games i paid less than $30 for on the Steam sale i haven't even gotten around to playing yet and since I'm taking the day off tomorrow I'm gonna get some shuteye and spend Thursday racking me up some kills. Hell I may even fire up some TF Classic or TF2 and see if my youngest, who won $50 in a TF2 competition BTW, hell of a sniper, can teach this old dog some new tricks...peace.
I was/am sureMSI also offered it for awhile with the 10 inch Wind, not a bad little unit. it sure as fuck wasn't SUSE as I've used SUSE and whatever they had on the thing was NOT SUSE. It looked like a rip of the EEE UI mixed with a little gOS and that sure as fuck ain't SUSE.
But in the end it don't matter, given the choice people took Windows and so nobody cares. I mean if you think there is a market, why did Walmart pull it? Surely you don't think the company that prides itself on undercutting everybody would just walk away from selling laptops cheaper than anybody? they walked away because just as Canonical found out if it don't run the software they don't want it. Oh and just FYI but even one of the RH devs says the Linux desktop model is broken and getting worse and if he don't know the truth then who in the fuck does?
Frankly I wish Linux had a usable product, I really do. I probably went through $300 in bandwidth cap overages trying every. damned. distro. just to find one that would consistently update without shitting itself, know what i found? It don't exist, and frankly probably won't exist as long as Linus Torvalds is controlling the kernel.
I could give you a long list of what is broken but why bother? The community won't listen and things will never get better so who cares. In the end Linux was a beautiful IDEA that was wasted because in the end the community became a bunch of elitist programmer pricks that think regular people shouldn't touch their "precious" OS. The only time that Linux has ever sold shit was when Google took it away from the community and made Android, which mark my words will be locked down as bad as iOS by 2015. Nobody listens, nobody learns, they just keep doing the same old shit, bleeding edge software, kernel fucking, leaning on the CLI, and the shocked when nothing changes and nobody will take Linux. Hell when people would rather steal the other guy's product by like a 30 to 1 margin rather than take yours for 100% free, what does that tell you?
It tells me that nobody in the Linux community will actually bother to make a product people will take, that's what.
Awww...what the hell grasshopper, old Hairy will show you the way. What you wanna do is go start talking to all your local mom & pop PC shops, let them know what kind of work you do and tell them you'll give them a referral fee for every one they send you way.
Ya see we old PC shop guys end up getting this kind of work because we are all little pack rats at heart and HATE throwing away working gear, and once you've done a few of these "miracles" it really don't take long for word of mouth to spread. Now since it don't sound like you want to get into the wonderful world of Windows PC repair, which is actually a damned nice way to meet girls BTW, then what you are gonna have to do is get to be buds with the PC shop guys.
While there are some like me that have old engineer buds that can do any chip changing and TTL stuff i can't there is just as many that are straight 'fixit guys' that can't do the soldering, replacing chips, fixing burnt boards, and like I said we hate throwing stuff away and telling somebody "we can't do it". hell that was one of the reasons i got to be buds with an engineer, I can't do the solder stuff anymore as my hands aren't steady enough and he hates working on computers so we just swap it out.
So go talk to the little shops, be prepared to BS awhile, have yourself some cards made up to hand out, and before long you'll be ass deep in busted gear. remember that most places won't work on this stuff so a little word of mouth goes a long way, a little ad or two can't hurt either. Trust old Hairy that there is plenty of old gear that needs fixing and as long as you charge a reasonable price (remember starting out you need the business, don't go nuts. Once you have the buzz the price can go up) and it won't take long for that phone to start ringing.
That is why I went and got those TWO machines instead of one. he is running it on the 60MHz and has the 100MHz set up in the back of his office for a spare. I told him to fire the spare up once a month, just to make sure it doesn't lose a cap and that if it ever doesn't fire up to bring it in BEFORE the other one wears out so we can fix it or repair it.
But I can see what you are talking about, i'm probably the only shop in my area that will still support the old stuff. I've had plenty of experience with it, even had a customer that ran new old stock for ages because the XRes software he needed was picky as hell about what kind of hardware it would and wouldn't run on. that damned thing wouldn't even run in a VM and he had a ton of plug ins for it that took him ages to find equivalents in Corel and PS.
If you do ever need chips changed perhaps you should send me an email and i can put you in touch with one of my customers, he's an old engineer that still does TTL work. I swear his little shop is like walking into a 1970s Radio Shack, he still has all the TTL bibles and shelves filled with nearly every kind of chip. He's retired but still works rocketry over at the local college and its just nuts what he can cook up with a breadboard and a handful of chips. Oh and a good source for that kind of stuff is BGMicro if you haven't heard of it, they are pretty good at getting their hands on NOS chips from guys like TI.
But you are right, talking to the other guys its all cell phones and laptops, they wouldn't know how to support something like an old C&C or other ancient hardware if their lives depended on it. As more of us get older and die or quit these companies that have all that expensive but old tech is gonna end up SOL. Can you imagine handing the Geek Squad a 60MHz Pentium 1 and telling them they need to fix it? LOL.
I think a better question would be "Why does it NEED to be better?" and the answer in most cases is "it doesn't". Remember perfect is the enemy of good and often the difference between "good enough" and great can be truly insane levels of expense.
At the last shop I worked at before striking out on my own i had to rush home one day and dig my very first two gamer PCs, a Pentium 60MHz and a P100MHz out of the shed, why? because a guy came in the shop about to have a breakdown because the PC they used to control their custom lathe had gone tits up and they had a $60k order due by the end of the week and no columns? No contract. No when i was cloning the drive I asked him "if the thing will only run on ISA, and the company is OOB, why not replace it?' and found out a unit today that will do what that one does would cost upwards of $150k, that one was paid for, it works, its easy to use.
Now I'm sure that if any of the programmers here saw that software they'd either laugh or bawl like babies. We're talking a primitive GUI running on top of DOS 3 that lets you build the design from templates or build your own from various shapes, VERY rudimentary and frankly made Win 3.x look like Win 7, ancient stuff. But ya know what? It works and works well. it does that one task, day after day after day, very WYSIWYG, you could get someone up to speed on running the unit in maybe an hour.
So while i can see why many programmers might look at something like that and think half ass I can also see why it was made the way it was. i'm sure those designing that software they are bitching about in TFA did it that way because they designed it for a task, weren't thinking about someone plugging into it down the line, and just concentrated on that one task. I'm not saying one should design like that today, but usually when i hear programmers screaming about bad software its because they've found something old and creaky and are bitching because they are gonna have to support it. Welcome to the real world Chuck, where jobs often suck.
And just to prove how fussy programmers can be I'll end this with something that always ends up getting programmers to gnash their teeth...I LIKE VB6, okay? If all you need is to have a GUI to a local DB frankly there is NO tool that can compare to VB6. Its fast, uses practically zip when it comes to resources, easy to whip off prototypes right there if you need to so the customer can see what fields he/she needs, for that one task and one task only, putting a GUI to a local DB even now you just can't beat VB6. That is why to this very day its like the third most popular business language, because businesses need that job often and it does it VERY well.
Thanks but i'm just a humble little shop owner in BF nowhere. But the nice thing about being a little shop owner in the middle of BF nowhere is i get to meet all walks of life who come into my shop and end up playing with that Win 8 CP box (haven't gotten around to putting on the RP yet, been swamped) so I get a wide range of opinions and product testers. Everything from soldiers to schoolteachers, backhoe operators to businessmen,little old ladies to kids in there with their moms.
And so far? Not found a SINGLE ONE that would give Win 8 a thumbs up, not one. Had a few backhanded compliments like "it might be nice on a cell phone or a tablet" but not a single one said "yes, i would like to have this on my desktop or laptop, how much to buy this?" which honestly I didn't even get that with Vista. Hell I still have some customers that LIKE Vista, the nagging makes them feel safer.
In fact this is the closest i got to an endorsement, from a Mrs Pipkin whose a grandma that came in to have me build a little gamer box for her grandson whose staying with her while his parents go through a nasty spell..."Why that is a nice looking cell phone picture, is that the little dancing robot thing? Oh its called Android? Yeah I hear that's quite nice......what do you man Windows? Windows what? why that's just stupid! Why would I want a cell phone on my computer?"
And out of the mouth of sweet Mrs Pipkin comes wisdom. What I've seen in my shop is this is typical of the average user on win 8. she how lost she is? How she can't figure out how to do even basic tasks? Frankly I haven't seen users this lost ever, not even when we switched from win 3.x to Win95, with it you had that nice little "press start to begin" pop up and with the pictures and text it wasn't too hard to pick it up. Ironically I've had an old B&W G3 running OSX on it there too and the users that play with it? don't really seem to have trouble grasping how to do basic tasks on OSX even though most have never touched it.
Linpus was the craptastic Linux MSI used for a little while, the EEE used Xandros. And they didn't quit selling it because MSFT offered them a deal, Xandros went ass deep in debt buying Scalix trying to gain a foothold in the enterprise market. Market went into a downturn, enterprise users started laying people off instead of buying new software, and since both the EEE tab UI and Xandros desktop were proprietary and owned by Xandros inc the ONLY way Asus could have kept it would have been to buy the company and take on the Scalix debt, something to the tune of 140 million. Considering the fact that once the XP units went on the market their Linux sales took a dump (both the Asus and MSI CEOs said this at Computex) they certainly weren't gonna add 140 million in debt and pay the entire Xandros team just to have the EEE in a Linux flavor.
Dude, just accept it, you have to give the people what they want and Linux don't. It works in places where corps lock it down like Android, no CLI, no searching for fixes, all clicky clicky simple, same with the EEE and its cell phone tab UI, but its just not a general use OS, its just not. it needs a fucking admin to fix the crap that breaks when Linus and his fellow fiddlers get done kernel fucking and you know what? most users? Do NOT have the skills to do that shit, to actually know WHAT hardware they have, down to make/rev/model, find the forum, find the fix, tweak said fix and apply it, they just don't. And more importantly they sure as hell ain't gonna learn.
So if you truly want to compete with Windows and OSX then you have to BE like Windows and OSX, got it? Folks will NOT do things YOUR way, you have to do things THEIR way. Now do you HONESTLY expect me to believe you think the Linux community will change that much? That they will give up the CLI, the fiddling, the bleeding edge software, all to get the general public to take it? And do NOT say people will change because you are just fucking delusional if you believe you can get the masses to "embrace the power of CLI" and frankly any that believe that is as batshit as a Moonie. Like it or not the future is dumbed down and hand holding NOT learning CLI.
Be like them, stay last place, that's pretty much it. Most likely the OEMs will bend over and take it or they will exit X86 altogether because Linux isn't really a choice, might as well close the doors anyway.
Because there is frankly a shitload of decently powered PCs that won't boot from USB? Especially a lot of the consumer OEM boxes, I swear its like a contest to see who can put the least amount of options in the BIOS. Do they get charged by the checkbox or something? But if you look at some of the Dell or eMachines units they have pretty much jack and squat in the BIOS and if you do the old F12 to choose boot trick more than half the time you get DVD or HDD but NO USB option. I've seen that on what are otherwise pretty nice systems, early Core Duo or Athlon X2s with 3Gb of RAM or better but of course with Debian hell a Pentium D or even a P4 with a Gb of RAM can make a nice Debian box. Hell I've even seen a few that won't boot from DVD for some reason, even though the DVD player seems to read just fine, but they'll boot from CDs no problemo.
So I can see why folks would want the CD/DVD option even when sticks are cheap, because if you've got an otherwise nice system that just won't boot to USB that still gives you options, nothing wrong with that.
I hate to break the news to ya sparky, but if you are on modern equipment that runs X86 and buy some game off Amazon from 2005 in a box you damned well better be ready to crack, as the older Starfuck will try to jam 32bit kernel hooks into a 64bit OS and royally fuck your system up. And the uninstaller on their site DOES NOT WORK ON X64 when it comes to older versions so you are fucked.
As for if there is a crack? yep, not a problem. Go to Gamecopyworld and see for yourself, cracks up the ass, even for the betas. Cracks upon cracks upon cracks, and any they get a C&D for they just link to megagame which is in.ru so they can host what GCW can't no problemo.
Finally most old games? they suuuuuck big sweaty chocolate balls. The graphics are ass, sound weak, AI crud, for every decent game on GOG there are 20 that suck big piles of shit. and old games that sucked in 2003? Suck in 2012.
Sigh, I really hate it when people refuse to learn their history. let me make this clear, MSFT had ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with Asus pulling Xandros off the EEE, okay? Xandros went ass deep in debt buying Scalix, couldn't pay the bills, went out of business, simple as that. And since both Xandros desktop and the EEE tab UI were proprietary property of Xandros INC there wasn't any way for Asus to do shit short of spending a couple of hundred mil to take on the debt and buy the company.
I know it probably makes you happy to think it was the evil Ballmer monster that destroyed Xandros but they were actually making money on the deal thank to the enterprise agreements they had with Xandros INC, nope it was just a classic business blunder, spent too much on an acquisition and quickly got in over their heads, simple as that.
If you don't believe me their forums are still up, their devs still BS there, ask them yourself and you'll hear the same thing. Scalix took their operating capital, they couldn't raise enough to keep going, they went under.
Won't happen and here is why: tablets are toys, that is correct. I've seen they are a great tool for a few jobs like inventory, suck everywhere else. Everything else is wrong. yes people still want a 'real' desktop but power users HATE Linux because the devs wear fiddly and PITA like badges of honor. Don't believe me? Go ask for a NON CLI solution to any problem and watch the venom and hate spew. Whether you like it or not Linux is filled with elitists that think the more fiddly the better because it "keeps out the noobs".
Sure Win 8 flops, just like Vista, what happened with Vista? XP installs went through the roof, same thing will happen here with win 7. Folks will get Win 8 machines, hate them, and either take them back or take them to their local shops where most will be happy to put "Win 7 all versions pre-activated" on it and since it passes WGA nobody will give a shit.
Apple? too damned high on the desktop. The average WinUser makes $35k, the average Apple $100k, you're not gonna get the masses paying $1k+ for macbooks. Some will, those that had been thinking about Apple anyway, most will stick with Win 7.
But for Linux to be friendly enough for Joe Sixpack many things would have to change and the devs including Linus won't let that happen. You'd need a hardware ABI which Linus won't allow so drivers wouldn't get shit upon with every update, you'd need CLI depreciated which would turn off the obtuse and fiddly lovers, you'd need all the crappy and half baked software removed from the repos which again obtuse and fiddly lovers wouldn't like, frankly it would have to be a HELL of a lot more Windows like which you'd have Linux devs bailing en masse if you even tried.
Nope the only way something like that would work is if it was like ReactOS where it looked and acted like Windows and would run their Windows software, and you can just imagine the screams if a major distro like Debian announced that was the new direction. Not to mention you'd have to pull it off by oct, never gonna happen. Instead they'll stay with Win 7, Ballmer will give downgrade rights to the OEMs who'll sell "Win 8 laptops/desktops" that are just Win 7 with a win 8 DVD dropped into the box nobody will use, Ballmer will declare victory, nothing changes.
People won't buy android desktops anymore than they'll buy android netbooks, why? Because if it looks like a PC it had damned well better run PC software, aka windows software, or they will take it back!
This is why I wish the OEMs would sink some cash and back ReactOS, because whether anyone wants to accept it or not there are millions of programs out there that people want and they simply don't want your hardware if it don't run their software. Everything from that stupid little program that came with their camera to all the little funky printers and hardware to bookkeeping, there is just too much time and money invested for most to switch. And don't even bother bringing up alternatives, the cost to switch a user from program A to program B is simply too high and honestly a lot of the current FOSS software just don't cut it, no way you could replace QuickBooks with gnuCash, or some specialized inventory software with a simple spreadsheet, it just won't cut it.
But this is why you see MSFT royally fucked when it comes to ARM, because the sword cuts both ways. Why the hell would they want Windows if the device won't run Windows X86 software? Well as we can see from WinPhone the answer is "they don't" so as i see it the OEMs have one of TWO choices...1.-get something like ReactOS running so people can have their software on X86 while they can get out from under Steve "LOL I think I work at Cupertino! herpa derp" Ballmer or get out of X86 altogether and see how old Steve-O likes having to actually BE Apple and do the whole damned thing himself.
Because you can't just slap Linux or Android on an x86 box or laptop and sell jack squat, it just don't work. Dell has tried it, Walmart, Best Buy, Asus, they all tried it and found the exact same thing over and over AND OVER, folks try their software, software don't work, unit goes back. People don't know Operating systems from operating tables folks, that's a fact. I've seen it myself when it comes to netbooks which according to my customers are NOT general use computers but "baby laptops" and as such should run all the everyday stuff they want, only slower because babies are smaller and weaker than big people.
No different that how a tablet is a "big screen i poke and play games on" and a smartphone is a "phone that lets me Google" so too does the X86 desktop and form factor come with notions you simply aren't gonna be able to remove, instead they'll simply hate your guts and bring your units back en masses. Nobody wants to learn how to use Wine, Google for tricks and fixes, learn CLI, all they want to do is go "clicky clicky" and have the software install and go, that's it. that's all they want.
Personally I think the OEMs are getting upset over nothing, surface will end up on woot! at 80% off, Win 8 will be the new MS Bob as the butt of all the jokes, Win 7 the new XP, and hopefully Steve "I heart Apple herpa derpa!" Ballmer will finally flush enough Redmond money down the shitter the board gets his fat sweaty ass out of the big chair and brings someone with a fucking brain to run the company. Hell I'm a little shop owner in BF nowhere and I could run that fucking company better!
Personally I thought it was obvious that it wasn't a forgery myself. lets face it CP/M wasn't this huge complex pile of code, the hardware that it was designed to run on was pretty simple and reverse engineering something like that so it would run on the Intel CPU? probably wasn't that hard.
A better question would probably be if any of VMS ended up in that first edition of WinNT since Cutler designed both but that would be harder to figure out since Cutler did design both and his programming style most likely didn't change so one could expect him to implement calls and functions in a similar manner.
Of course in the end the whole thing is moot anyway. By the time the dust settled all that was left was MSFT and APPL, everyone else from GEM to BeOS, OS/2 to Amiga for better or worse have gone to that great dump in the sky. Bitching about it now one way or the other sure as hell ain't gonna change anything anyway.
I take it you missed the article from about a week ago about quantum entanglement and the possibility of making a functional Maxwell's demon?
The more we learn about the quantum world the more I think we are like those classical scientists that thought everything was made of of four classic elements, the whole air/fire/water/earth bit. It is looking more and more like what we can see with our eyes is just this teeny tiny layer at the top that tells us about as much about what is really going on as throwing a log on a fire showed those early observers thousands of years ago who thought that the fire must be contained within the log.
Uhhh.....never heard of TPB? Or Gamecopyworld? they have Steam cracks ya know, no different than cracks for any other retail games. I've never understood this argument as it wouldn't take me one minute more to crack any Steam game i have than it would any retail game except i wouldn't also be cleaning out a Starfuck or SecuROM infection along with it
While GOG is fine if all you want is old (the vast majority of their catalog is over a decade old, hence the old in good old games) there are plenty of us that like to play much newer games, like Deus Ex HR, Batman AC, Saints Row The Third, etc and with Steam we can get those games cheaply and without hassle and often without Starfucking.
So I don't see what the problem with Steam is. if Ubisoft pulls the plug you'll need to crack, same with EA, same with Steam, same with every major publisher. A crack is a crack is a crack friend.
Actually I wish the OEMs would pull another "gang of nine" and get behind ReactOS because it could finally force competition in the X86 market. You see ReactOS is basically trying to solve two VERY big problems with having an OS other than Windows, 1.-The sucktastic Linux driver situation and 2.- The millions of mission critical little programs that will never be ported to anything else.
Whether the community wishes to accept it or not these are bothe big problems in the X86 world. The amount of hardware for X86 is just insane, big names and small, cheap objects and specialized equipment costing tens to hundreds of thousands. Now before anybody says "But Linux has drivers!" sure you have SOME drivers, not ALL drivers. And how many of those SOME drivers are really good and stable, and how many are alpha quality buggy shit simply because the devs just don't have the time and/or access to the specialized hardware to make better?
And then there is the software. Linux is fine if all you want to do is either surf the web like grandma, or be a programmer, anything else? You are SOL. 50 billions txt editors but where is the medical transcription software? Specialized office management software that can compete with quicken/quickbooks? Parts management, 50 thousand medical programs, more niches and notches of software than any geeker programmer in Linux can ever imagine has been written for Windows over the years which is why MSFT has to spend so much time on backwards compatibility.
If you could fix these two problems then you could finally have competition in the X86 market. I'm sure some will say "Why should we care? ARM herpa derpa" and I'll tell you because Intel's Sandy/Ivy will drink ARM's milkshake while it cries like a little bitch, that's why. The IPC on even a midrange AMD stomps the dogshit out of ARM and frankly always will because ARM is designed for low power and when you've got heavy loads that need processing you don't give a shit about how little power it sips, you care about IPC. And with both Intel and AMD getting into the tablet phone space you frankly should care, because there are a hell of a lot of people that would like to run all those programs named above on a tablet that pops into a keyboard and becomes a laptop without the assraping prices we've seen in the past.
So X86 still matters, its still a billion dollar business, and if reactOS could get some love maybe it would be a one company show.
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Everyone marked it funny but it should have been insightful. After playing with it a couple of months and talking with my customers....what does it offer REALLY? what does win 8 bring to the table except being a "LOL I iz a cellphone LOL" PITA UI?
Its "faster boot time" is nothing but a classic MSFT cheat, in this case its more like a wake from hibernate than an actual boot, the UI is frankly crap on a cracker if you're not using touch which means a good 90%+ of machines out there are gonna suck with it, the "easy reinstall" is kinda pointless since I haven't found a reason to actually NEED to reinstall Win 7 with my customers, hell the only real positive I could find was the overhaul of Windows services but honestly that was such a "WTF are they thinking?" that should have been done years ago and certainly isn't worth putting up with "LOL I can haz touch?" MS Bob UI!
If you use Windows for work or play there really isn't a point in having Windows 8 unless you are going for a touchscreen device, there really isn't. You look at the reviews and they all say the same thing "Windows 8 is pointless" and I have to agree. I have gone through every MSFT OS since Win 3.x, including clunkers like WinME and WinVista but I can say without a doubt that Win 8 has to be the worst Windows I've ever been forced to use. At least with Vista you could kill UAC and tweak it into a halfway usable OS, with ME if you had a Win98SE disc you could build a frankenstein of the two and actually have a decent OS, whereas unless you are buying it on a tablet or cellphone Win 8 is a boat anchor on your workflow.
So just skip it, no point in dealing with Metro or Tiles or whatever they call it next week, unless you just really desire having your PC feel like it is a supergigantic smartphone
USB would be just the most retarded way to go for something like this, its too slow and he's gonna be swapping worse than when we used to have to back up things to CDs.
I'm guessing he's going USB because he don't have the cash to buy a NAS of that size but you can always jury rig you a NAS, its really not hard. We did something similar at the last shop I worked at when the boss scored a ton of SCSI drives at an auction and ended up with nearly a Tb NAS when the average HDD was 40Gb. Here is how you do it..
You take a couple of full size towers, bigger the better, preferably twinkies as it makes the job a LOT easier. You strip 'em to the frames and use a couple of spot welds to make them into one giant case along with another couple of weld to mount a shitload of drive cages into the case. Then you take a cheap server or even desktop board, all that matters is it has a shitload of PCI slots which you fill with controller cards, SCSI in our case but SATA today, mount the board along with a big PSU to feed the drives and voila! One big ass DIY NAS unit that can hold a huge pile of drives. Just to finish our white trash conversion we tied on a Walmart box fan to keep the sucker cool and stuck it in a corner, worked great.
The only software that I think would work with USB is Paragon Drive Backup as you can have it split by just about any size you want. They also have their own Linux based recovery media but damned if i know if you can get the software as a Linux installer, never ran into that situation to need it in that way. I know its worked great for me making OS images and backing up files and folders onto USB drives but if you're gonna be splitting to a ton of little drives then you are just gonna have to swap, no way out of that. If you want to fill the drives up then set Paragon to a small size, say 700Mb, but good fucking luck checking your backup as the amount of swapping you're gonna do is just insane.
Look any way you slice it Nokia is dead and they were dead before Elop ever walked in the door, why? Because their big business is about to go the way of the 8-track, that's why. Nokia made their money on dumbphones and we can all see the writing on the wall, as the chips drop dumbphones will disappear. Hell Walmart has begun offering smartphones on their cheapo prepaid plans at $125, when that gets down to $50 that's it, its over.
Put yourself in the shoes of Elop, you walk through the door and the business is totally fractured, you got no less than THREE different phone OSes, none of which is compatible with the others, Symbian, MeeGo/Maemo, and the Java based one I can't remember the name of. Now the company couldn't buy WebOS because they couldn't throw a billion like HP, Apple sure as fuck ain't selling them iOS, Android is right out because Samsung and HTC do it better than anybody and the market is flooded with Android phones already, and no product you have will be able to compete for at least a year and a half and that is if everything goes perfectly. So he took the money from MSFT and hoped like hell they knew WTF they were doing with WinPhone.
Was it a good call? Nope but frankly i don't see what other call the guy could make, Android would make them an also ran, a third or fourth string player at best compared to Samsung and HTC, and MeeGo/Maemo simply wasn't done and was already behind. When you are in the same market as Apple you can't go half assed which is what MeeGo would have been if he shoved it out the door so the guy literally was out of options. He had no OS, a market that was dying, and was rapidly running out of time. I don't see where the guy had a choice really, its not like he could wave a magic wand and suddenly make MeeGo/Maemo into an iPhone killer, it just wasn't anywhere near done.
The bigger question is this: Why are we trying to pretend its a century ago? There was a reason for having heavy math then, there is simply no reason other than a few specialized fields now. It'd be like giving students a half a dozen years of calligraphy classes while completely ignoring a good 80%+ of all our interaction is done now with keyboards.
The simple fact is the computers do it better, after all when you come right down to it all computers are glorified number pushers. When you figure up the odds of the average person getting the math wrong VS the computer getting the math wrong it just seems stupid as hell to push for anything beyond the basic unless that student is gonna be going into a field where its required like physics.
I just think we could be giving the kids more of an education if we began to specialize during HS. Have programming classes, business classes, and for those that truly wish to go into something where heavy math is required then they should have that option, probably at a magnet school where you can have teachers that can really give them some serious math education.
Because as it is now we simply waste that time on kids that don't want it, won't use it in their careers, and will just do whatever it takes to get the class over with. Hell from what I've seen math is like sports in either you have a math brain or you don't, those that have it will pursue careers that let them use it, others will avoid it like the clap.
No I think it just shows FOSS as what it is at its heart...a bazillion hackers jerking off because they think they are smarter than everybody else. that is why you have a bazillion text editors, programmers use text editors and they all think they are better than the other guy. Ego eee-eee-eeego, ego come and it won't go away...
But there is a REASON why they call it "re-inventing the wheel' because that is EXACTLY what it is, its wasting time and effort doing something that a billion before you have already done, no different and no better than some VB GUI class project.
If you wanna compete then compete, if you don't? Then STFU and quit whining that nobody wants your class project OS. Whether you like it or not your COMPETITION, and that is again EXACTLY what they are, are sinking hundreds of millions into making things ever easier, simpler, and more reliable. Both OSX and windows have gotten to the point that they can run million dollar software while at the same time your average 7 year old can do basic tasks in either one.
But you CANNOT compete with that with another text editor, okay? You cannot compete with that with everybody "doing their own thang" and creating a bunch of half assed GUIs and leaning on CLI as a crutch. You either bring your A game or GTFO the field and that is that. The world is NOT made of hackers, inside Suzy the checkout girl is NOT a bash programmer waiting to come out, okay?
If you want to be a programmer hobbyist toy? I have no problem with that, just join Haiku and the others and be happy with what you have. But quit fucking lying to yourself and the general public that "Linux is ready for the desktop" when its an unfinished mess, alright? You're not fooling anybody and frankly as far as quality goes your OS shouldn't even be counted in the same league as Win2K, a 12 year old abandoned OS.
Glad to help, and don't forget advertising, every little bit helps when you are starting out, everything from any trade papers in your area to an old fashioned newspaper ad in the business section, you just gotta get out there and get your name known.
Believe me, once you've done a few of those jobs and get a rep you'll be good to go. And I bet if you search there are still some mom & pop shops around, if not in the city in the small towns nearby, and they're good for getting the word out.
And I know what you're talking about as i was once too a white collar IT desk jockey, trying to do too much with too little with bosses that were always looking to fuck IT but then my kids gave me a bit of an intervention and i got the hell out. I may not make as much, and it may be swamped one week and slow the next, but at least with a little shop i actually get to help folks who are actually grateful for it and listen to me which is more than i can say about those damned PHBs with MBAs, Masters of Being Assholes.
Yeah and Bruce Willis was in it too, it was called Hudson Hawk.
Oh you want to watch 'em foam like rabid dogs, then talk about whether BSD should be counted like GPL under the FOSS banner and watch the fireworks!
But lets face it, the whole FOSS movement is fractured all to hell anyway, that is why you have 50 text editors, a bazillion distros, everybody reinvents the wheel rather than learn to get along. Kinda sad really, if all that energy would have been put into say 3 distros, one for home, one for enterprise, and one for mobile? You'd probably end up with an OS so damned good it would smack the shit right out of Ballmer and Cook but as long as everyone is bickering there is no worry about that.
Dude i buy from GOG okay? But lets not kid ourselves, they have MAYBE 20% good games and the rest? Deep fried tampons. Yes graphics don't make the game, got the original Deus Ex along with the sequels and all the DLC for $15 on the Steam sale so i know its good.
But you could buy every decent game GOG has and still have change left of $1k dude. Just because something is old don't make it good, a shitty game is a shitty game. And whether you want to accept it or not games have gotten a LOT better since Deus Ex and if you refuse to buy anything but DRM free frankly you might as well stick with Plants VS Zombies and other "casual" games because all the good shit? you ain't getting it. Bioshock? Excellent (GFWL), HL series? Excellent (Steam), Saints Row series? Incredibly fun (Steam), Just Cause II one of the best sandboxes EVAR, FEAR 1&2 (the third is gears of Fear wallkisser edition but since I paid $8 on steam who cares) the Max Paynes...
Hell I could go on all day, but why bother. If you want to be a zealot about something? Be a zealot, knock yourself out dude. You're not hurting me, who has more games than I could ever play and can jump into a game with my kids just by popping up a Steam chat, you're sure as hell aren't hurting the game publishers a damned bit, who are counting their ever larger piles of money, and old Gabe at Valve isn't gonna shed any tears if you don't want to play anything but a handful of good games and a bunch of old crap.
Hell if it makes you feel better, why not look at it as a fucking rental, huh? At the insanely dirt cheap prices you get on Steam frankly you couldn't rent the games on the X360 and you can play them as long as you want. I have not paid more than $20 for a game in the 4 years I've been on Steam, AAMOF the most I paid for a single game was $12 for Just Cause II and that was only because it came with all the DLC. At those prices if Valve goes tits up (highly unlikely) I think I can afford the 20 minutes it'd take to download the fricking cracks, don't you?
And until the day that doom scenario that will never happen happens i get games cheaper than Amazon, bundles, free chat and matchmaking, no MP bullshit, i can gift a prezzie to my kids in less than 5 minutes, I'm getting a hell of a lot more from Valve than what Valve is taking from me, by a pretty large amount.
If you want to deny yourself fine dude, me i got a kick ass lotsa meat pizza, some ice cold tea to wash it down with, and over a dozen games i paid less than $30 for on the Steam sale i haven't even gotten around to playing yet and since I'm taking the day off tomorrow I'm gonna get some shuteye and spend Thursday racking me up some kills. Hell I may even fire up some TF Classic or TF2 and see if my youngest, who won $50 in a TF2 competition BTW, hell of a sniper, can teach this old dog some new tricks...peace.
I was/am sureMSI also offered it for awhile with the 10 inch Wind, not a bad little unit. it sure as fuck wasn't SUSE as I've used SUSE and whatever they had on the thing was NOT SUSE. It looked like a rip of the EEE UI mixed with a little gOS and that sure as fuck ain't SUSE.
But in the end it don't matter, given the choice people took Windows and so nobody cares. I mean if you think there is a market, why did Walmart pull it? Surely you don't think the company that prides itself on undercutting everybody would just walk away from selling laptops cheaper than anybody? they walked away because just as Canonical found out if it don't run the software they don't want it. Oh and just FYI but even one of the RH devs says the Linux desktop model is broken and getting worse and if he don't know the truth then who in the fuck does?
Frankly I wish Linux had a usable product, I really do. I probably went through $300 in bandwidth cap overages trying every. damned. distro. just to find one that would consistently update without shitting itself, know what i found? It don't exist, and frankly probably won't exist as long as Linus Torvalds is controlling the kernel.
I could give you a long list of what is broken but why bother? The community won't listen and things will never get better so who cares. In the end Linux was a beautiful IDEA that was wasted because in the end the community became a bunch of elitist programmer pricks that think regular people shouldn't touch their "precious" OS. The only time that Linux has ever sold shit was when Google took it away from the community and made Android, which mark my words will be locked down as bad as iOS by 2015. Nobody listens, nobody learns, they just keep doing the same old shit, bleeding edge software, kernel fucking, leaning on the CLI, and the shocked when nothing changes and nobody will take Linux. Hell when people would rather steal the other guy's product by like a 30 to 1 margin rather than take yours for 100% free, what does that tell you?
It tells me that nobody in the Linux community will actually bother to make a product people will take, that's what.
Awww...what the hell grasshopper, old Hairy will show you the way. What you wanna do is go start talking to all your local mom & pop PC shops, let them know what kind of work you do and tell them you'll give them a referral fee for every one they send you way.
Ya see we old PC shop guys end up getting this kind of work because we are all little pack rats at heart and HATE throwing away working gear, and once you've done a few of these "miracles" it really don't take long for word of mouth to spread. Now since it don't sound like you want to get into the wonderful world of Windows PC repair, which is actually a damned nice way to meet girls BTW, then what you are gonna have to do is get to be buds with the PC shop guys.
While there are some like me that have old engineer buds that can do any chip changing and TTL stuff i can't there is just as many that are straight 'fixit guys' that can't do the soldering, replacing chips, fixing burnt boards, and like I said we hate throwing stuff away and telling somebody "we can't do it". hell that was one of the reasons i got to be buds with an engineer, I can't do the solder stuff anymore as my hands aren't steady enough and he hates working on computers so we just swap it out.
So go talk to the little shops, be prepared to BS awhile, have yourself some cards made up to hand out, and before long you'll be ass deep in busted gear. remember that most places won't work on this stuff so a little word of mouth goes a long way, a little ad or two can't hurt either. Trust old Hairy that there is plenty of old gear that needs fixing and as long as you charge a reasonable price (remember starting out you need the business, don't go nuts. Once you have the buzz the price can go up) and it won't take long for that phone to start ringing.
That is why I went and got those TWO machines instead of one. he is running it on the 60MHz and has the 100MHz set up in the back of his office for a spare. I told him to fire the spare up once a month, just to make sure it doesn't lose a cap and that if it ever doesn't fire up to bring it in BEFORE the other one wears out so we can fix it or repair it.
But I can see what you are talking about, i'm probably the only shop in my area that will still support the old stuff. I've had plenty of experience with it, even had a customer that ran new old stock for ages because the XRes software he needed was picky as hell about what kind of hardware it would and wouldn't run on. that damned thing wouldn't even run in a VM and he had a ton of plug ins for it that took him ages to find equivalents in Corel and PS.
If you do ever need chips changed perhaps you should send me an email and i can put you in touch with one of my customers, he's an old engineer that still does TTL work. I swear his little shop is like walking into a 1970s Radio Shack, he still has all the TTL bibles and shelves filled with nearly every kind of chip. He's retired but still works rocketry over at the local college and its just nuts what he can cook up with a breadboard and a handful of chips. Oh and a good source for that kind of stuff is BGMicro if you haven't heard of it, they are pretty good at getting their hands on NOS chips from guys like TI.
But you are right, talking to the other guys its all cell phones and laptops, they wouldn't know how to support something like an old C&C or other ancient hardware if their lives depended on it. As more of us get older and die or quit these companies that have all that expensive but old tech is gonna end up SOL. Can you imagine handing the Geek Squad a 60MHz Pentium 1 and telling them they need to fix it? LOL.
Anyone else think of the opening scene from "Zombieland" just now?
I think a better question would be "Why does it NEED to be better?" and the answer in most cases is "it doesn't". Remember perfect is the enemy of good and often the difference between "good enough" and great can be truly insane levels of expense.
At the last shop I worked at before striking out on my own i had to rush home one day and dig my very first two gamer PCs, a Pentium 60MHz and a P100MHz out of the shed, why? because a guy came in the shop about to have a breakdown because the PC they used to control their custom lathe had gone tits up and they had a $60k order due by the end of the week and no columns? No contract. No when i was cloning the drive I asked him "if the thing will only run on ISA, and the company is OOB, why not replace it?' and found out a unit today that will do what that one does would cost upwards of $150k, that one was paid for, it works, its easy to use.
Now I'm sure that if any of the programmers here saw that software they'd either laugh or bawl like babies. We're talking a primitive GUI running on top of DOS 3 that lets you build the design from templates or build your own from various shapes, VERY rudimentary and frankly made Win 3.x look like Win 7, ancient stuff. But ya know what? It works and works well. it does that one task, day after day after day, very WYSIWYG, you could get someone up to speed on running the unit in maybe an hour.
So while i can see why many programmers might look at something like that and think half ass I can also see why it was made the way it was. i'm sure those designing that software they are bitching about in TFA did it that way because they designed it for a task, weren't thinking about someone plugging into it down the line, and just concentrated on that one task. I'm not saying one should design like that today, but usually when i hear programmers screaming about bad software its because they've found something old and creaky and are bitching because they are gonna have to support it. Welcome to the real world Chuck, where jobs often suck.
And just to prove how fussy programmers can be I'll end this with something that always ends up getting programmers to gnash their teeth...I LIKE VB6, okay? If all you need is to have a GUI to a local DB frankly there is NO tool that can compare to VB6. Its fast, uses practically zip when it comes to resources, easy to whip off prototypes right there if you need to so the customer can see what fields he/she needs, for that one task and one task only, putting a GUI to a local DB even now you just can't beat VB6. That is why to this very day its like the third most popular business language, because businesses need that job often and it does it VERY well.
Thanks but i'm just a humble little shop owner in BF nowhere. But the nice thing about being a little shop owner in the middle of BF nowhere is i get to meet all walks of life who come into my shop and end up playing with that Win 8 CP box (haven't gotten around to putting on the RP yet, been swamped) so I get a wide range of opinions and product testers. Everything from soldiers to schoolteachers, backhoe operators to businessmen,little old ladies to kids in there with their moms.
And so far? Not found a SINGLE ONE that would give Win 8 a thumbs up, not one. Had a few backhanded compliments like "it might be nice on a cell phone or a tablet" but not a single one said "yes, i would like to have this on my desktop or laptop, how much to buy this?" which honestly I didn't even get that with Vista. Hell I still have some customers that LIKE Vista, the nagging makes them feel safer.
In fact this is the closest i got to an endorsement, from a Mrs Pipkin whose a grandma that came in to have me build a little gamer box for her grandson whose staying with her while his parents go through a nasty spell..."Why that is a nice looking cell phone picture, is that the little dancing robot thing? Oh its called Android? Yeah I hear that's quite nice......what do you man Windows? Windows what? why that's just stupid! Why would I want a cell phone on my computer?"
And out of the mouth of sweet Mrs Pipkin comes wisdom. What I've seen in my shop is this is typical of the average user on win 8. she how lost she is? How she can't figure out how to do even basic tasks? Frankly I haven't seen users this lost ever, not even when we switched from win 3.x to Win95, with it you had that nice little "press start to begin" pop up and with the pictures and text it wasn't too hard to pick it up. Ironically I've had an old B&W G3 running OSX on it there too and the users that play with it? don't really seem to have trouble grasping how to do basic tasks on OSX even though most have never touched it.
Dude...seriously....learn your history, okay?
Linpus was the craptastic Linux MSI used for a little while, the EEE used Xandros. And they didn't quit selling it because MSFT offered them a deal, Xandros went ass deep in debt buying Scalix trying to gain a foothold in the enterprise market. Market went into a downturn, enterprise users started laying people off instead of buying new software, and since both the EEE tab UI and Xandros desktop were proprietary and owned by Xandros inc the ONLY way Asus could have kept it would have been to buy the company and take on the Scalix debt, something to the tune of 140 million. Considering the fact that once the XP units went on the market their Linux sales took a dump (both the Asus and MSI CEOs said this at Computex) they certainly weren't gonna add 140 million in debt and pay the entire Xandros team just to have the EEE in a Linux flavor.
Dude, just accept it, you have to give the people what they want and Linux don't. It works in places where corps lock it down like Android, no CLI, no searching for fixes, all clicky clicky simple, same with the EEE and its cell phone tab UI, but its just not a general use OS, its just not. it needs a fucking admin to fix the crap that breaks when Linus and his fellow fiddlers get done kernel fucking and you know what? most users? Do NOT have the skills to do that shit, to actually know WHAT hardware they have, down to make/rev/model, find the forum, find the fix, tweak said fix and apply it, they just don't. And more importantly they sure as hell ain't gonna learn.
So if you truly want to compete with Windows and OSX then you have to BE like Windows and OSX, got it? Folks will NOT do things YOUR way, you have to do things THEIR way. Now do you HONESTLY expect me to believe you think the Linux community will change that much? That they will give up the CLI, the fiddling, the bleeding edge software, all to get the general public to take it? And do NOT say people will change because you are just fucking delusional if you believe you can get the masses to "embrace the power of CLI" and frankly any that believe that is as batshit as a Moonie. Like it or not the future is dumbed down and hand holding NOT learning CLI.
Be like them, stay last place, that's pretty much it. Most likely the OEMs will bend over and take it or they will exit X86 altogether because Linux isn't really a choice, might as well close the doors anyway.
Because there is frankly a shitload of decently powered PCs that won't boot from USB? Especially a lot of the consumer OEM boxes, I swear its like a contest to see who can put the least amount of options in the BIOS. Do they get charged by the checkbox or something? But if you look at some of the Dell or eMachines units they have pretty much jack and squat in the BIOS and if you do the old F12 to choose boot trick more than half the time you get DVD or HDD but NO USB option. I've seen that on what are otherwise pretty nice systems, early Core Duo or Athlon X2s with 3Gb of RAM or better but of course with Debian hell a Pentium D or even a P4 with a Gb of RAM can make a nice Debian box. Hell I've even seen a few that won't boot from DVD for some reason, even though the DVD player seems to read just fine, but they'll boot from CDs no problemo.
So I can see why folks would want the CD/DVD option even when sticks are cheap, because if you've got an otherwise nice system that just won't boot to USB that still gives you options, nothing wrong with that.
I hate to break the news to ya sparky, but if you are on modern equipment that runs X86 and buy some game off Amazon from 2005 in a box you damned well better be ready to crack, as the older Starfuck will try to jam 32bit kernel hooks into a 64bit OS and royally fuck your system up. And the uninstaller on their site DOES NOT WORK ON X64 when it comes to older versions so you are fucked.
As for if there is a crack? yep, not a problem. Go to Gamecopyworld and see for yourself, cracks up the ass, even for the betas. Cracks upon cracks upon cracks, and any they get a C&D for they just link to megagame which is in .ru so they can host what GCW can't no problemo.
Finally most old games? they suuuuuck big sweaty chocolate balls. The graphics are ass, sound weak, AI crud, for every decent game on GOG there are 20 that suck big piles of shit. and old games that sucked in 2003? Suck in 2012.
Sigh, I really hate it when people refuse to learn their history. let me make this clear, MSFT had ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to do with Asus pulling Xandros off the EEE, okay? Xandros went ass deep in debt buying Scalix, couldn't pay the bills, went out of business, simple as that. And since both Xandros desktop and the EEE tab UI were proprietary property of Xandros INC there wasn't any way for Asus to do shit short of spending a couple of hundred mil to take on the debt and buy the company.
I know it probably makes you happy to think it was the evil Ballmer monster that destroyed Xandros but they were actually making money on the deal thank to the enterprise agreements they had with Xandros INC, nope it was just a classic business blunder, spent too much on an acquisition and quickly got in over their heads, simple as that.
If you don't believe me their forums are still up, their devs still BS there, ask them yourself and you'll hear the same thing. Scalix took their operating capital, they couldn't raise enough to keep going, they went under.
Won't happen and here is why: tablets are toys, that is correct. I've seen they are a great tool for a few jobs like inventory, suck everywhere else. Everything else is wrong. yes people still want a 'real' desktop but power users HATE Linux because the devs wear fiddly and PITA like badges of honor. Don't believe me? Go ask for a NON CLI solution to any problem and watch the venom and hate spew. Whether you like it or not Linux is filled with elitists that think the more fiddly the better because it "keeps out the noobs".
Sure Win 8 flops, just like Vista, what happened with Vista? XP installs went through the roof, same thing will happen here with win 7. Folks will get Win 8 machines, hate them, and either take them back or take them to their local shops where most will be happy to put "Win 7 all versions pre-activated" on it and since it passes WGA nobody will give a shit.
Apple? too damned high on the desktop. The average WinUser makes $35k, the average Apple $100k, you're not gonna get the masses paying $1k+ for macbooks. Some will, those that had been thinking about Apple anyway, most will stick with Win 7.
But for Linux to be friendly enough for Joe Sixpack many things would have to change and the devs including Linus won't let that happen. You'd need a hardware ABI which Linus won't allow so drivers wouldn't get shit upon with every update, you'd need CLI depreciated which would turn off the obtuse and fiddly lovers, you'd need all the crappy and half baked software removed from the repos which again obtuse and fiddly lovers wouldn't like, frankly it would have to be a HELL of a lot more Windows like which you'd have Linux devs bailing en masse if you even tried.
Nope the only way something like that would work is if it was like ReactOS where it looked and acted like Windows and would run their Windows software, and you can just imagine the screams if a major distro like Debian announced that was the new direction. Not to mention you'd have to pull it off by oct, never gonna happen. Instead they'll stay with Win 7, Ballmer will give downgrade rights to the OEMs who'll sell "Win 8 laptops/desktops" that are just Win 7 with a win 8 DVD dropped into the box nobody will use, Ballmer will declare victory, nothing changes.
People won't buy android desktops anymore than they'll buy android netbooks, why? Because if it looks like a PC it had damned well better run PC software, aka windows software, or they will take it back!
This is why I wish the OEMs would sink some cash and back ReactOS, because whether anyone wants to accept it or not there are millions of programs out there that people want and they simply don't want your hardware if it don't run their software. Everything from that stupid little program that came with their camera to all the little funky printers and hardware to bookkeeping, there is just too much time and money invested for most to switch. And don't even bother bringing up alternatives, the cost to switch a user from program A to program B is simply too high and honestly a lot of the current FOSS software just don't cut it, no way you could replace QuickBooks with gnuCash, or some specialized inventory software with a simple spreadsheet, it just won't cut it.
But this is why you see MSFT royally fucked when it comes to ARM, because the sword cuts both ways. Why the hell would they want Windows if the device won't run Windows X86 software? Well as we can see from WinPhone the answer is "they don't" so as i see it the OEMs have one of TWO choices...1.-get something like ReactOS running so people can have their software on X86 while they can get out from under Steve "LOL I think I work at Cupertino! herpa derp" Ballmer or get out of X86 altogether and see how old Steve-O likes having to actually BE Apple and do the whole damned thing himself.
Because you can't just slap Linux or Android on an x86 box or laptop and sell jack squat, it just don't work. Dell has tried it, Walmart, Best Buy, Asus, they all tried it and found the exact same thing over and over AND OVER, folks try their software, software don't work, unit goes back. People don't know Operating systems from operating tables folks, that's a fact. I've seen it myself when it comes to netbooks which according to my customers are NOT general use computers but "baby laptops" and as such should run all the everyday stuff they want, only slower because babies are smaller and weaker than big people.
No different that how a tablet is a "big screen i poke and play games on" and a smartphone is a "phone that lets me Google" so too does the X86 desktop and form factor come with notions you simply aren't gonna be able to remove, instead they'll simply hate your guts and bring your units back en masses. Nobody wants to learn how to use Wine, Google for tricks and fixes, learn CLI, all they want to do is go "clicky clicky" and have the software install and go, that's it. that's all they want.
Personally I think the OEMs are getting upset over nothing, surface will end up on woot! at 80% off, Win 8 will be the new MS Bob as the butt of all the jokes, Win 7 the new XP, and hopefully Steve "I heart Apple herpa derpa!" Ballmer will finally flush enough Redmond money down the shitter the board gets his fat sweaty ass out of the big chair and brings someone with a fucking brain to run the company. Hell I'm a little shop owner in BF nowhere and I could run that fucking company better!
Personally I thought it was obvious that it wasn't a forgery myself. lets face it CP/M wasn't this huge complex pile of code, the hardware that it was designed to run on was pretty simple and reverse engineering something like that so it would run on the Intel CPU? probably wasn't that hard.
A better question would probably be if any of VMS ended up in that first edition of WinNT since Cutler designed both but that would be harder to figure out since Cutler did design both and his programming style most likely didn't change so one could expect him to implement calls and functions in a similar manner.
Of course in the end the whole thing is moot anyway. By the time the dust settled all that was left was MSFT and APPL, everyone else from GEM to BeOS, OS/2 to Amiga for better or worse have gone to that great dump in the sky. Bitching about it now one way or the other sure as hell ain't gonna change anything anyway.
I take it you missed the article from about a week ago about quantum entanglement and the possibility of making a functional Maxwell's demon?
The more we learn about the quantum world the more I think we are like those classical scientists that thought everything was made of of four classic elements, the whole air/fire/water/earth bit. It is looking more and more like what we can see with our eyes is just this teeny tiny layer at the top that tells us about as much about what is really going on as throwing a log on a fire showed those early observers thousands of years ago who thought that the fire must be contained within the log.
Uhhh.....never heard of TPB? Or Gamecopyworld? they have Steam cracks ya know, no different than cracks for any other retail games. I've never understood this argument as it wouldn't take me one minute more to crack any Steam game i have than it would any retail game except i wouldn't also be cleaning out a Starfuck or SecuROM infection along with it
While GOG is fine if all you want is old (the vast majority of their catalog is over a decade old, hence the old in good old games) there are plenty of us that like to play much newer games, like Deus Ex HR, Batman AC, Saints Row The Third, etc and with Steam we can get those games cheaply and without hassle and often without Starfucking.
So I don't see what the problem with Steam is. if Ubisoft pulls the plug you'll need to crack, same with EA, same with Steam, same with every major publisher. A crack is a crack is a crack friend.
Actually I wish the OEMs would pull another "gang of nine" and get behind ReactOS because it could finally force competition in the X86 market. You see ReactOS is basically trying to solve two VERY big problems with having an OS other than Windows, 1.-The sucktastic Linux driver situation and 2.- The millions of mission critical little programs that will never be ported to anything else.
Whether the community wishes to accept it or not these are bothe big problems in the X86 world. The amount of hardware for X86 is just insane, big names and small, cheap objects and specialized equipment costing tens to hundreds of thousands. Now before anybody says "But Linux has drivers!" sure you have SOME drivers, not ALL drivers. And how many of those SOME drivers are really good and stable, and how many are alpha quality buggy shit simply because the devs just don't have the time and/or access to the specialized hardware to make better?
And then there is the software. Linux is fine if all you want to do is either surf the web like grandma, or be a programmer, anything else? You are SOL. 50 billions txt editors but where is the medical transcription software? Specialized office management software that can compete with quicken/quickbooks? Parts management, 50 thousand medical programs, more niches and notches of software than any geeker programmer in Linux can ever imagine has been written for Windows over the years which is why MSFT has to spend so much time on backwards compatibility.
If you could fix these two problems then you could finally have competition in the X86 market. I'm sure some will say "Why should we care? ARM herpa derpa" and I'll tell you because Intel's Sandy/Ivy will drink ARM's milkshake while it cries like a little bitch, that's why. The IPC on even a midrange AMD stomps the dogshit out of ARM and frankly always will because ARM is designed for low power and when you've got heavy loads that need processing you don't give a shit about how little power it sips, you care about IPC. And with both Intel and AMD getting into the tablet phone space you frankly should care, because there are a hell of a lot of people that would like to run all those programs named above on a tablet that pops into a keyboard and becomes a laptop without the assraping prices we've seen in the past.
So X86 still matters, its still a billion dollar business, and if reactOS could get some love maybe it would be a one company show.