While I agree that having more ARM stuff for DIY is always of the cool, I really do wish the blogs and newspapers would quit this "Its the death of X86!" crap. it would be like saying "This killer new moped will get rid of trucks 4 evar!". Doesn't that sound dumb? same thing here.
X86 has a place, ARM has a place. When you need to do some heavy number crunching, or want huge detailed 3D worlds, or need to deal with a crapload of data? Then x86 is your guy. Need to be ultra mobile, where every microwatt counts? Need something light and rugged where it doesn't need fans, or a mil spec toughness for harsh conditions? Then ARM is your baby.
As a retailer I can tell you why the sales of x86 has gone down, its because for most folks what they have is more than good enough for the tasks they are doing. Just going to FB, checking webmail, and web surfing? Then frankly dual cores are overkill and anything above that is EXTREME overkill. Tablets are selling because they are new, they are hip, they are lightweight, and most importantly they don't have to compete with literally hundreds of millions of models and makes already built. Most folks now have at least 2, sometimes more, when it comes to desktops, so unless another "killer app" comes along that makes those too weak to keep up? naturally growth will slow down. it is just the OEMs got spoiled during the MHz wars when changing your desktop every three years was pretty much required to get anything done.
But now things have settled down and each will have their niche. The x86 will be in the desktop at home and in the office, as well as netbooks and laptops when people need more power than they do battery life. ARM will have the cell phones, tablets, and embedded applications. Both have great strengths, both have great weaknesses, so can't we all just....get along?
Question:....why? I mean I can see it if you are a Linux admin just moonlighting on a WinServer as a favor or something, but if you are the administration full time on WinServer wouldn't it be smarter to stick with the native Powershell? What advantages does Cygwin give over Powershell? Do Cygwin scripts run natively across the network like Powershell scripts do?
Having never used Cygwin I'm curious to see what advantage that you think it gives an admin over Powershell. Because it seems like with.NET being everywhere that it would make more sense to just stick with what you already have deployed, am I missing something?
And the easy drop in replacement for AD+GPO+Exchange+Sharepoint...is? Or are you suggesting they throw away all their desktops, their hundreds of thousands, possibly millions of dollars in windows software, and pay a giant team of developers to rewrite all that from scratch just so....they can what? Say they are leet?
Webservers with Linux makes sense, embedded development Linux makes even more sense. but trying to say you can just rip out every WinServer setup and replace it with Linux either shows you are incredibly naive about what these machines actually do or you are a total zealot who would be happy to torpedo a company as long as it advanced your agenda...so which is it?
Show me a SINGLE time even in depression that our energy use WENT DOWN. Just once will do. Go ahead, take your time because you'll find out it has never happened even once since the industrial revolution. Hell even during WWII when we made conservation a matter of nationalistic pride we only CUT DOWN, not stopped our domestic growth for power.
Look at the math that the others posted above and you show me where they are wrong. The cheapest one, where the poster admitted he is giving you the panels at 1/4th the price assuming that economies of scale will suddenly cause you to be able to drop the price THAT far (Hint, they won't, at least not near term) and you are looking at over 5 trillion dollars and 66 years to build just to power the United States. And that is NOT counting maintenance, transmission losses, infrastructure to support it, cost of disposal, that is JUST the costs of the plants themselves.
Look I'm not against renewables, and in small communities like places in the third world where the infrastructure hasn't been built yet? Like cell phones may be cheaper for them to go straight to solar thermal or wind. But the needs of someone who has never had electricity is a hell of a lot lower than for someone in the west that has AC units and cell phones and laptops and widescreens and kids that all have their own....you get the picture.
But if you think I'm wrong, show me. The numbers are all laid out above you, you have the entire web at your command. you show me how you can power just the USA, not the planet, just the USA without reaching trillions of dollars and decades of construction. What are we supposed to do until then? Build mud huts? Look up the numbers, see for yourself. Even with a dead economy our power needs are CLIMBING as they have been every. single. year. for decades. This isn't bias, this is the ability to read a chart.
But please don't waste our time spamming that desertec link, okay? They are government subsidized and haven't made a single dime, and even they admit they won't scale to the levels we are talking, they only speak of using their design as a supplement not a replacement for what we have. So you show us some real numbers that shows us you can build enough capacity even in 2 decades to give us just what we are using now, not counting what we will be using 20 years from now. Please, prove me wrong.
Because they are planning on royally screwing the DVD by mail service and don't want it to kill Netflix? Its no secret the USPS is going under, they are broke as a joke and getting ready to close branches left and right. Add to this the teabaggers that wouldn't allow a tax raise on the top 1% even if the bridges all collapsed and planes were falling out of the sky and you can see the writing on the wall. The only way to save the USPS will be to raise the holy hell out of prices.
Now as we saw even a small price increase when it comes to Netflix has people bailing in droves, so what is Netflix to do? Simple you spin off the losing model and keep the one that will remain profitable after our spineless president (I swear he makes Carter look like a tough leader) bends over for the teabaggers yet again.
Of course now that Blockbuster has been bought out and got that nice cash infusion they may be in trouble anyway on the streaming side, and with a Redbox on every corner their DVD by mail biz is DOA. Final prediction? Netflix gone in less than 3, 4 tops.
I'd rather run into them than get a visit from Centauri any day of the week. I mean I like a challenge, but a gung ho iguana and one fighter against an entire armada? There is a challenge and then there is suicidal.
As for TFA, were they surprised? Humans looooove puzzles and if you can make a problem into a puzzle game you'll have plenty of folks lining up to work on your "game". I think they should be really pushing this along with the "at home" GPU programs as you'd be surprised at how many people out there would be happy to help but they don't know they exist. I personally have been informing every customer with a halfway decent GPU and quite a few have joined one of the at home projects. I myself will be joining as soon as I can get around to finding a suitable GPU cooler replacement, those HD48xx series run too damned hot with the OEM cooler. The moron that decided a single slot cooler for a chip with a 256bit pipeline and hundreds of stream processors was a good idea really needed to be smacked.
but they really need to get the word out. Send someone to good Morning America and some of the other major talk shows and get some buzz built up, as I bet there are tons of folks out there that would be happy to join in and help, if only they knew it existed.
Actually I'd say the bigger problem is all the run off getting into the oceans. Run off gets into oceans, little fish eat run off, big fish eat little fish, seagull eats big fish, it don't really sound like a case for Kojak here.
I think we really need to be worried about the core cause of all this resistance which is the agro-business pumping everything that breathes full of antibiotics to increase yields. We need to be saving antibiotics for humans, cut off all tax breaks and subsidies for farms that refuse to quit using antibiotics, basically if there ever was a job for regulation THIS would be the one.
Sadly since Citizens United they could be feeding the cows Soylent Green for all the congress critters are gonna care as they get their big fat checks free and legal now. How sad is it when the only real hope of doing anything about this corrupt mess lies in the hands of a couple of comedians, aka Colbert and Stewart? I guess the days of Woodward and Bernstein and real hard hitting reporters are long gone now.
But one of these days one of these nasties is gonna find a way to really spread through the population and we'll get to have another black plague, and in large part it will be due to nothing but greed and the endless drive for higher profits. Why is it I can't even muster up any outrage anymore? this kind of evil BS is so ingrained in the system now I can't even build up a hearty "meh" about it anymore. Just another way greed is cocking things up for everyone, shock gasp surprise.
You'd think they'd advertise such a cool feature, wouldn't you? Just shows what a shitty CEO Ballmer is. I found out about it by accident when my dad plugged in his mike and typed mike into the search box trying to find out where he needed to be to change the settings Up popped "voice recognition" and he started working with it. works about 50/50 with dad, but a lot of that is due to the meds he's on making his voice change timber. Some days he sounds normal, other days like Slappy White, and I think having the voice just keep switching like that throws it off. It did the same with Dragonspeak when he gave it a spin.
But barring that it does work pretty well for typing letters, at least for dad. Me I can type quicker than I can talk most of the time so I don't really see the point for me but for those like dad that have eyesight problems or just those that want to control their PC ala Star trek it IS pretty cool nonetheless.
Name the part and I'll be happy to find the driver FOR you. Just let me know which one you tried so I don't duplicate the effort. You can then get a copy of "Windows 7 Tiny" to test it, which only uses 3Gb of HDD space installed.
Hell did you just try using the Vista driver? because the Vista/7 driver model is damned near identical, just as you could run Win2K/XP/2K3 drivers interchangeably unless you were switching from 32bit to 64bit. I personally have Vista X64 drivers running on my Windows 7 install simply because nobody bothered to write a Windows 7 driver for my USB capture card. Works beautifully BTW, great picture and integrates perfectly with WMC.
BTW did you notice I got modded down for daring to try to help you? How sad that the Moonies here.....err...I mean FOSSies, have such a groupthink circle jerk that the one and ONLY posting allowed within a thousand yards of a FOSSie story is "Gee Biff, isn't Linux perfect? Why it sure is Skip, and RMS's farts smell like roses!"
Sadly as you found out trying to run it on a laptop and I as a retailer found out trying to actually sell Linux it is MORE WORSE NOW THAN EVER thanks to Torvalds constant kernel fiddling and the driver mess. Out of the 8 machines I picked at random to test Linux on, tried a half dozen distros BTW, guess how many survived with full functionality after first upgrade? NONE. Zip, zero, nada, squat. Wireless, sound, video, Ethernet, there was ALWAYS something broken.
I could provide links to fellow retailers running away from Linux, or point out that Dell has to run their own repo just to keep drivers from breaking, but what's the point? Just like Moonies they'll just stick their fingers in their ears and go "CLI is leet! copypasta into term makes our neckbeard thick! You must be M$ Ninja!" and go back to their circle jerk, so why bother. let them enjoy 1% and ignore their crazy asses I say.
Riiight. You DO realize that everything he said is actually true, yes? That at our current rate of growth the ONLY choices are nuke, coal, and oil, yes? Because the only other choice is to lock ourselves into a level being used currently and refuse to add capacity. Then we can enjoy rolling black outs, perhaps weeks at a time with no power at all as the strain blows out parts of the grid, or maybe you'd prefer tossing our PCs and ACs and going back to ice boxes and a big fan to cool the whole house?
Like it or not folks renewables simply don't scale up to the levels we are talking about, not without MASSIVE losses of land which with a growing population isn't really doable. Think the government is in your business now? How about if your wife has to piss in a cup monthly to make sure she is taking her pill as we put a Chinese style one child per couple rule in place?
Solar? Uses massive amounts of land and the best ones, which cost a ton of money BTW, are looking at more fossil fuels to make them than you get back out in energy and are tops 20% efficient. Wind? doesn't blow all the time and certainly won't ramp up between 3PM-7PM when everyone gets home and turns their devices on. Geothermal? earthquakes. Wave tech? See wind.
Its not like we have a choice here folks, and if the NIMBYs would quit acting like asses, which BTW I propose any NIMBY that blocks power creation? should be forced to be self sustaining. No power plant? Then no power FOR YOU. I bet that would make them STFU real quick. On the flip side i propose the owner of the plant has to live within 4 miles of the plant WITH his/her family, give them a reason not to skimp on safety huh? But with the new designs nuke can be a hell of a lot safer, cleaner than coal and oil, and can ramp up with need. Hell with the thorium design we could even get rid of transfer losses by building a mini reactor in each city above a certain size instead of running juice halfway across the countryside!
Exactly! For an example of catering to the sample audience look at I Am legend, which I'll admit wasn't a great version of that story to start with (The Vincent Price version #1, Heston #2, Legend #3 in my book) but look what they did.
In the original ending the doctor figures out that they are not animals, and are simply trying to rescue their brethren from HIM who he realizes is being the giant douche. Instead of this ending that made it more like the book and hence the name "I Am Legend" because he IS the monster, instead because the audience didn't like that they replaced it with a Michael Bay style "blow shit up real good" ending which made no fucking sense, and totally threw away all they had been building up towards, such as the "monsters" laying traps for him when they were supposed to be mindless, etc.
While I thought Lucas with his Greedo shot first horseshit was rightly called out for being moronic and changing the character for no reason on the flip side if you let modern audiences design the movies it is gonna be a Michael Bay bomb fest, and all movies will be "Smart ass good guy falls for bimbette and blows shit up REAL good". Frankly we have enough Michael bay tripe in this world, do we REALLY want to be catering to those that keep buying that dreck?
Yeah that is what they said with holographic discs and I still haven't seen anyone offer one of those at anything less than truly insane prices. just because you can build something for X doesn't mean you'll be able to build something for Y, sometimes things just don't scale. I bet being nanowire it is a royal PITA to deal with and automation when it comes to wires that tiny probably won't be easy.
Remember they thought the same would happen with core memory too, but by the time they found a way to produce it completely by automation it was obsolete. So while I wish them nothing but luck, as I wouldn't mind a cheap touchscreen for my little netbook, I wouldn't hold my breath.
Question: Have you tried SIW to find out what the exact chips you are running that are having Win 7 driver problems, and then replacing them with an updated driver from another model with the same chip?
Because I have found a LOT of the time when it comes to laptops when the OEM says "Windows X not supported" it means "We didn't bother with a driver for it" and I bet my last nickel that there is NO part on your machines that SOME OEM didn't write a better Win 7 driver for than what you have now.
Here is how you fix it, find out the name of your device that is having problems, lets say it is the R690m. Then all you do is Google "R690m Windows 7 driver" and choose the latest one you can find. Then simply extract the driver from the.exe (both winRAR and 7-Zip can do this) and then as I put it "Rub windows nose in it" by installing the driver manually which if you are on/. I'm sure you know how to do a manual driver install.
That's it! In less than 30 minutes you'll have a much better windows 7 driver and all those boo boos go bye bye. you would be surprised how often I have to do that trick, especially with wireless. just last week I had an HP with Vista only drivers and when the guy tried to install 7 himself it hosed his wireless. I just used SIW to find out it was a Ralink chip, found a Ralink driver for win 7, rubbed windows nose in it, and there you go. One more happy customer.
You just have to remember that with Windows there is ALWAYS more than one way to skin a cat. sometimes it is the most simple way, sometimes you need to add a step or two, but you should always be able to find a way around the boo boo. Hell I have a granny that bought the Win 7 HP 3 pack and decided to have me load the last license on "her spare" which was a 2.2Ghz P4 that was old as dirt. took a little tweaking but now she is happily running on it while I have her new machine here in the shop. somehow she managed to completely wipe ALL the fonts off the machine, ugh. I swear that woman could kill a Sherman tank with a toothbrush.
You know if there are any trolls here it is you and your fellow zealots, lying your asses off that "Linux is ready for the masses!" and "Linux is ready for the common man!" and then when it is pointed out YOU COULD NOT BE MORE WRONG the ONLY thing you can do is stick your fingers in your ears and go "You are not leet! You are a M$ Ninja! You must be troll or shill, you no drink koolaid and believe our lies!"
You know what you and your fellow zealots remind me of? moonies, that's what. Just like a Moonie you could bring 100 scholars to say "That is completely wrong, not even close" and they just stick their fingers in their ears and say "You were sent to destroy us by the enemy!" while ignoring the fact that the "enemy" doesn't give a shit about you because they have seen the writing on the wall and Linux is going nowhere. that is why MSFT changed their Linux "threat level" from red to green because just as I said you won't listen, you won't accept that users won't do things your way, so you'll rot in last place.
And you DO realize your ENTIRE post is a classic example of "moving the goal posts" yes? What have we seen here repeatedly? Why "Linux is ready for the masses!" and "Linux is ready for the common man!" and what do you and the other zealots trot out when I point out that is a lie? "Why why why...we don't want common people anyway! They are not leet! Doing things the stupid way makes you a hacker! makes your neckbeard full! You are a M$ Ninja!"
Lies, bullshit, and excuses. that is ALL the Linux community has to offer anymore. Frankly I'm gonna LMAO when Google just takes the whole thing away from you. See they have seen the word is consumers, and they will just lock down the droid and tell you to fuck right off. Oh but you'll line up to kiss their ass anyway, because at least SOMEONE is using linux, right? you've been below the margin for error for 20 damned years now, right down there with haiku and OS/2 and all the other hobby bullshit. NO real growth, NO real gains, and I'd be happy to give you the link showing Linux is LOSING share on the server, but why bother? Like a Moonie you'll just stick your fingers in your ears and go "We are leet! U r shill, or M$ Ninja!" . Enjoy last place loser, you certainly have earned it.
Put that little green thing away Yoda, nobody is impressed.
As for TFA while its nice to make all these little guesses how will we know if any are right when it would take a couple of dozen lifetimes at top speed for a probe to get anywhere close to one of these?
That is why I always find stories like this depressing. its like "Hey here is another cool thing you'll never set foot on or even see video of isn't that great? Oh and its probably full of three titted hookers and beer, too bad you'll never get to find out huh?"
As someone who grew up on Battlestar and Star trek these articles just remind me of how much cool stuff there is out there that we will NEVER get to see close up in my lifetime. That really sucks.
Yeah if you like throwing away money! my PC is going on 3 years old now, its gone from a dual to a quad, gone from 2Gb to 4Gb to 8Gb of RAM, gone from IGP to HD4650 to HD4850, and from a 500Gb to 2 500Gb to 1Tb to 3Tb of HDD. For you to do the same you would have had to toss your machine at least twice, possibly more. Talk about wasteful!
The easiest and cheapest way if the wires aren't needing to be moved is simple plastic zip ties. they are dirt cheap, once in place won't be coming off, and can quickly clean up even the biggest mess. And I should know as having a 4 port KVM switch does tend to get messy. But by having them zip tied there is only a single KVM cable neatly tucked under my table for when I want to play with a machine not on my network, everything else is zip tied to the back of the desk. easy peasy.
THANK YOU...you see? It is THAT, that total bullshit elitist with NO numbers to back it up attitude that dooms Linux to nowhere land. Did you know that Win9x/Win2K together equal MORE than your OS? Two completely abandoned Windows beats your latest and greatest?
But I hate to burst your bubble, but copypasta into a term doesn't give you magical gonad powers, nor will it make Angelina Jolie suddenly show up and be impressed by your "hacker" skillz. THERE IS A REASON why everyone abandoned CLI and it is because it is an unintuitive pita irritating little bitch.
As I said, and as was told and confirmed to me by a Linux admin with over a decade at his job and a half a dozen certs. you give both a Linux admin AND a Win admin a server task that NEITHER has ever done before and guess what? The win admin will win every single time because CLI is powerful IF AND ONLY IF you know EXACTLY what you need to do and the steps to accomplish it, period. All the CLI is is a giant game of Simon, where you memorize and parrot back.
But hey, you wanna be lower than even a crappy Java based phone OS? No skin off of me friend. when all those millions of boxes hit EOL all those shops like mine will just IGNORE YOUR OS and put Win 8 on the ones that will run it, and strip the rest. sure it'll be a massive pile of machines that COULD have been running Linux, but so what? you don't want any unwashed masses touching your precious bell bottomed OS, right? enjoy last place.
Dude, friend, mind a little advice? buy yourself some cheap off lease desktops and laptops and rent a little spot and open your own shop. you'll never get rich but you know what? PEOPLE LISTEN TO YOU, they don't treat you like a moron, just the opposite, people treat you like you are a genius and will always defer to your judgement, you get to help out real folks who are real grateful, and if you aren't married you'll also find women like a guy that's handy.
And I know EXACTLY how you feel, as I'd have chest pains and a pretty much constant headache. I literally ate so many BC powders that a prick on the finger would bleed for an hour, the stress was literally killing me. When I told my nephews what I was thinking of they said "Please do uncle, we'd rather have you alive than have your money" and then proceeded to tell me how corpse like I looked.
Now I have my color back, I spend my weekends playing bass in a trio just to enjoy being creative again, life is good. I don't make anything like I once did, and it can be feast or famine, but you know what? I'm a thousand times happier and feel a hell of a lot better than I ever did dealing with corp. And it is damned nice to know there are hundreds of machines built and set up by me that are safe, secure, and run well, making their owners happy. I even had the local checkout girl ask me "Hey, would you please follow me to the parking lot and tell me if you can upgrade this computer that was given to me?" and I laughed hard when I saw it. She started to cry and I said "Oh I'm not laughing at you honey, I'm laughing at the fact that was one of my first builds and even has my initials on the bottom, see?". It had been running for nearly 7 years without fail, the chip had finally just gotten too slow for all the FB bling bling crap. I knew money was tight for her so I sold her an old P4 3GHz board with 1Gb of RAM for $80 and threw in the install. Now it is doing everything she wants and even helps her kids with homework thanks to the Open Office I installed.
Its a nice feeling helping folks, and makes the lower pay WELL worth it IMHO.
Don't you just love the guy above you that said I shouldn't be working on anyone's network if I can't do custom images? When we are talking about GAMER RIGS where the braintrust bought bleeding edge OCed from the factory everything?
You nailed why I had to shitcan the whole thing but I would just add this dipshit bought EVERYTHING OCed, and I DO mean everything. We are talking RAM that ran out of spec, boards that ran hot, he treated the whole thing like one big LAN party. The amount of time I would have had to blow dealing with that bullshit would have ended up costing them more than me just calling HP and getting some bog standard business desktops (which is what I fricking had in the first place) where I could actually deploy a single image and where I could have spares sitting there for failures.
But anyone who has dealt with seriously "leet" gamer crap knows it can be some seriously unstable funky hardware that needs to be fussed over, and sure as hell has no place in a law firm!
Uhhh...you mean included in a standard desktop like say... all versions of Windows 7 except Starter? While I haven't personally tried it I hear its quite nice.
As for TFA if they can score football and basketball they have a shot, but if they don't get the content they are boned. I guess it will all come down to how much Ballmer is willing to lose to get a real toehold in the market, because as we saw with the original Xbox MSFT isn't above taking a loss if it'll get them a good foothold into a new market they desire.
Congrats, you are part of the whole 0.001% that use a CLI friend! Now be honest here, no fibbing....do you HONESTLY believe you will get the other 99.9% of the planet to do as YOU do, or do you think you will have better luck getting them to use your product (because that's what it is if you want ANY share, if you don't call it a hobbyist OS and just be happy with what you have) if you give them what THEY want?
I repeat, do you know what the definition of insanity is? its doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Where was Linux 4 years ago? 1% Where was it two years ago? 1%...guess where it'll be in two years if you stay on this path? Don't need Kojak to solve the case, the answer is 1%.
If you want to be a hobbyist OS? That is COMPLETELY fine, no worries, I'm happy for you. But you can't have your cake and eat it to, you can't say "Linux is ready for the desktop!" or "Linux is as good as Windows and OSX!" while relying so heavily on CLI because IT IS NOT EVEN CLOSE, its a lie. YOU know this, I know this, and the numbers don't lie friend. I can give you link after link of retailers dropping your product if you'd like.
So make the choice, step away from the bell bottoms and CLI and join the 21st century, or stop bullshitting and pretending Linux is usable for the masses when they will NEVER EVER NO MATTER WHAT YOU SAY OR DO embrace CLI like its the damned force. they DO NOT CARE how powerful it is, they DO NOT CARE if you think it is easy, they DO NOT CARE if you think copypasta is the correct answer to a problem. you WILL do it their way or you WILL gain no share, its simple as that.
Choose now, because in 2014 millions of XP machines will go EOL and you COULD grab a good share of those, if only you'd change. the choice is yours, get busy growing or get busy dying I believe is the phrase.
Sadly when you are dealing with a doofus corp you can't even hire from within because middle management is usually dipshits as well.
I had one client that I told I didn't have time to be their admin after setting up their system, but I'd put them in touch with a couple of competent admins that were rock solid, take their pick. What did they do? Some PHB decided 'they cost too much! i know a guy who's a wiz at computers! I bet he could do it" and I bet the admins out there can already see where THIS is going.
Well I get called back in a little over a year after their "wiz" got caught looking at porn and running a Q3 server when he was supposed to be working and they were having "little problems"...little problems my Irish ass. this genius had GOT RID OF THE DESKTOPS that I had bought because they were 'too weak" and built gamer desktops piecemeal from tigerdirect, so give up making images or deploying anything as NOTHING matched, got rid of my standard Sonicwall for a bunch of those shitty blue DLink routers and was using a bunch of HOME CONNECTIONS from various ISPs. Somebody want more speed? he'd hire another ISP. Needless to say I had to shitcan the whole thing but the PHB had already gotten his bonus and moved on so didn't get the blame.
And it is THAT, that right there, that to me marks the dufus problem in a nutshell. it is upward failure where doing dumbshit yields a quick gain followed by a HORRIBLE outcome, but the gain gets the dufus moved up or a "selling point" on his resume and he/she is out of their before the excrement hits the bladed cooling device.
I mean how many guys here have dealt with a company butchering IT and then they acted amazed when the shit falls apart? or tries to get too much done with too little and the first real problem is a trainwreck of biblical proportions? That is why I got out of corporate, got tired at beating my head against the wall while dealing with shit that went right off the stupid meter scale. Hell I have a buddy still in who actually got drug to regional HQ by a PHB that wanted him fired because, and I quote "You have NO RIGHT to tell me who I can speak to! You WILL let my emails through from Melissa through or you're fired!" That's right folks, he was fighting FOR the right to get infected! Lucky the regional head knew a tiny bit and watched the news so he knew what the Melissa bug was, otherwise he could have been fired.
I just can't take that level of dumbshit anymore, I just can't. At least with SOHOs, SMBs, and Home Users, they KNOW they don't know shit and that is why they hire me, so that I can tell them what to do and help them be smart and safe. With corporate there always seemed to be someone who knew just enough to be dangerous as hell, and had just enough power to serious fuck the whole works. Some guy who thinks he knows IT, or some bean counter who think the gear will last another two years when they cheapskated and bought cheap shit in the first place that started dying when the warranty went, just ignorant dumb stupid ass...ugh. If you still do corporate? My prayers are with you friend, may you have a strong stomach and have an immunity to headaches.
Not for consumers. Most of my customers are now on Win 7 X64 and frankly none of them know this because they just go "clicky clicky next next next" and it "just works". Hell I run 15 year old games next to the latest and greatest on Win 7 X64, it don't care. Sure if you went looking around the file system it is ugly as fuck, but who does that? You could restrict access to C: (which I often do to my more accident prone users) and they'd never notice. Just have all their user files on D: and use junctions to make apps think they are dumping in C:/Users when they are dumping on D: My Documents and you are good to go.
So I'd say MSFT did a damned good job on the switch. When I first heard of X64 I thought it'd be a royal PITA like the switch from 16 to 32bit was. The first time I went to install a 32bit app on WinXP X64 I literally cringed, waiting for the crash but....nope. it just worked. Windows didn't care, and the ONLY app I couldn't run was a Win95 era DB I had used for CDs. One app out of hundreds, just one. that is pretty damned good for a complete arch switch if you ask me.
You may be happy at the idea of "pulling an Apple" and losing backwards compatibility, but I say it'd be suicide. Folks would just keep the last BC version and not touch the new one. what sells Windows is I can drop a brand new Win 7 machine on a network with 2K,XP,and Vista machines and ALL the software "just works". If they kill 32bit software support it would be the death of Windows. maybe in another decade, once as you pointed out all the shitty software vendors have finally been drug kicking and screaming into 64bit land, but until then? Suicide friend, sheer suicide.
What's to believe? Ballmer has already said they ARE gonna put Windows 8 on ARM, its a done deal. Have you SEEN metro? Its a fricking cellphone GUI, and about as dumb as Unity on Ubuntu. the only saving grace for Win 8 is you only have to kill a single service to get the real desktop GUI back.
And sadly as someone who makes his living building and supporting machines that run MSFT products while I'd like to believe they aren't dumb as fuck, unfortunately we have evidence to back up the dumb as fuck theory. If they aren't dumb as fuck, how do you explain not giving experienced office users a way to go back to the classic menu? How do you explain the Kin? The Zune? Having Windows 8 AND WinPhone running on ARM?
Its actually simple friend, its the simple fact that BALLMER IS A SHITTY CEO like Carly and Hurd at HP, and his idea of "innovation" is going "Me too! Oooohhh me too!" and then putting out a shitty half baked product into an established market and expecting the MSFT name to carry it. hell the only thing that saved their OS division was the fact they brought in the MS Office engineers after the Vista debacle and gave them free rein. if Ballmer would have gotten his way Win 7 would have probably looked like a damned iPhone!
so I hope you're right friend, God i hope you're right. I spent a SOLID year and a half doing nothing but wiping out Vista installs, man I do NOT want to do that again, okay? do you hear me MSFT? QUIT COCKING THINGS UP! Win 7 is good, leave poor Win 7 alone!
Welcome brother! Coffee and donuts are in the back and I'll be giving a lecture on "How to never be hit by the scourge of WinRot" at 2PM, be sure to catch it. For those that won't be there the correct answer is "TuneUp Utilities" which will kill WinRot dead.
And I'm sure to get hate for pointing this out, but who gives a crap, I got more Karma than God. You wanna know why Linux is stuck a a lousy 1%, even lower than a Java based phone OS? Its actually VERY simple and easy to explain, and no, it isn't some conspiracy by Gates and the Illuminati, they are too busy using the World bank to take over the planet.
It is because YOU DON'T LISTEN, neither to consumers nor to the world at large. Haven't you gotten the memo? the word is CONSUMERS in 50 foot flaming neon, so what do you do? "Hey lets put a link to bash on the desktop! It'll make our neckbeards thick and copypasta in a terminal makes you leet!". it is like the way RMS still calls everyone "hackers" like he is at a computer club in 79, it isn't even funny anymore, its just.....kinda sad, that's what it is.
In case you haven't gotten the memo THE WORLD IS GUI NOW and NOBODY, but nobody, well except for server admins, use terms for anything anymore. Do you see a terminal link on the desktop of Windows 7? Nope you got to go to start...all programs... accessories...and there it is, buried as far down as they can because NOBODY USES IT. Oh and before anyone wastes their time pointing out Powershell look it up on MSDN, the articles are ALL "How to manage YOUR SERVER with Powershell" because it ain't for consumers folks! hell look at the closest thing Linux has ever had to a hit, Android. What is it? Why its all GUI, no CLI, clicky clicky GUI city!
You've got this great OS, with tons of software, all free, nice looking DEs, all this wonderful stuff, yet your stubborn refusal to wake up and smell the 21st century is dooming it to a niche OS so tiny Java craphones kick its ass. If there is ANY CLI then YOU HAVE FAILED. if the one and ONLY answer is "open up bash and type"? Then YOU HAVE FAILED. hell look at the biggest weakness Linux has right now, driver issues. Do you have a simple "roll back drivers" button? How about a "find drivers" button, both of which your competitor has had for years? NOPE, all you have is "open up bash and type" which as I pointed out was fail.
Do you know what the definition of insanity is? Its doing the same thing over and ov er and expecting a different result. you've had 20 damned years folks, you are STILL dead last. Doesn't that give you a clue? How about the fact that a decade old Windows beat the shit out of Linux on netbooks? LISTEN TO THE CONSUMERS and change, or stay last place. because you will NEVER get them to join in the forum dance, you will NEVER get them to "open up bash and type" and you will NEVER get them to "embrace the power of CLI" like its the damned force, okay? Is that REALLY so hard to understand? Hell even on servers Windows is winning at a 70%/30% split. Why is that? simple, as a Linux admin told me "Linux is powerful if you know EXACTLY what you need to do and the steps to do it. Windows is quicker if you are given a task where you've never had to do it before" why? Because GUIs are intuitive and reward exploration, and CLIs give you a blinking cursor and a shitload of man pages, that's why!
Its just human nature folks, humans are visually oriented creatures that like to touch and explore. GUIs enhance and appeal to these parts of our nature. CLIs are about as UNINTUITIVE an interface as you could possibly design and the only reward you'll get for exploring is frustration or breaking something, this is why they fell out of favor for EVERYONE BUT YOU. But hanging onto a terminal like Disco Stu hanging onto his bell bottoms won't make the term come back, hell bell bottoms will come back first .
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While I agree that having more ARM stuff for DIY is always of the cool, I really do wish the blogs and newspapers would quit this "Its the death of X86!" crap. it would be like saying "This killer new moped will get rid of trucks 4 evar!". Doesn't that sound dumb? same thing here.
X86 has a place, ARM has a place. When you need to do some heavy number crunching, or want huge detailed 3D worlds, or need to deal with a crapload of data? Then x86 is your guy. Need to be ultra mobile, where every microwatt counts? Need something light and rugged where it doesn't need fans, or a mil spec toughness for harsh conditions? Then ARM is your baby.
As a retailer I can tell you why the sales of x86 has gone down, its because for most folks what they have is more than good enough for the tasks they are doing. Just going to FB, checking webmail, and web surfing? Then frankly dual cores are overkill and anything above that is EXTREME overkill. Tablets are selling because they are new, they are hip, they are lightweight, and most importantly they don't have to compete with literally hundreds of millions of models and makes already built. Most folks now have at least 2, sometimes more, when it comes to desktops, so unless another "killer app" comes along that makes those too weak to keep up? naturally growth will slow down. it is just the OEMs got spoiled during the MHz wars when changing your desktop every three years was pretty much required to get anything done.
But now things have settled down and each will have their niche. The x86 will be in the desktop at home and in the office, as well as netbooks and laptops when people need more power than they do battery life. ARM will have the cell phones, tablets, and embedded applications. Both have great strengths, both have great weaknesses, so can't we all just....get along?
Question:....why? I mean I can see it if you are a Linux admin just moonlighting on a WinServer as a favor or something, but if you are the administration full time on WinServer wouldn't it be smarter to stick with the native Powershell? What advantages does Cygwin give over Powershell? Do Cygwin scripts run natively across the network like Powershell scripts do?
Having never used Cygwin I'm curious to see what advantage that you think it gives an admin over Powershell. Because it seems like with .NET being everywhere that it would make more sense to just stick with what you already have deployed, am I missing something?
And the easy drop in replacement for AD+GPO+Exchange+Sharepoint...is? Or are you suggesting they throw away all their desktops, their hundreds of thousands, possibly millions of dollars in windows software, and pay a giant team of developers to rewrite all that from scratch just so....they can what? Say they are leet?
Webservers with Linux makes sense, embedded development Linux makes even more sense. but trying to say you can just rip out every WinServer setup and replace it with Linux either shows you are incredibly naive about what these machines actually do or you are a total zealot who would be happy to torpedo a company as long as it advanced your agenda...so which is it?
Show me a SINGLE time even in depression that our energy use WENT DOWN. Just once will do. Go ahead, take your time because you'll find out it has never happened even once since the industrial revolution. Hell even during WWII when we made conservation a matter of nationalistic pride we only CUT DOWN, not stopped our domestic growth for power.
Look at the math that the others posted above and you show me where they are wrong. The cheapest one, where the poster admitted he is giving you the panels at 1/4th the price assuming that economies of scale will suddenly cause you to be able to drop the price THAT far (Hint, they won't, at least not near term) and you are looking at over 5 trillion dollars and 66 years to build just to power the United States. And that is NOT counting maintenance, transmission losses, infrastructure to support it, cost of disposal, that is JUST the costs of the plants themselves.
Look I'm not against renewables, and in small communities like places in the third world where the infrastructure hasn't been built yet? Like cell phones may be cheaper for them to go straight to solar thermal or wind. But the needs of someone who has never had electricity is a hell of a lot lower than for someone in the west that has AC units and cell phones and laptops and widescreens and kids that all have their own....you get the picture.
But if you think I'm wrong, show me. The numbers are all laid out above you, you have the entire web at your command. you show me how you can power just the USA, not the planet, just the USA without reaching trillions of dollars and decades of construction. What are we supposed to do until then? Build mud huts? Look up the numbers, see for yourself. Even with a dead economy our power needs are CLIMBING as they have been every. single. year. for decades. This isn't bias, this is the ability to read a chart.
But please don't waste our time spamming that desertec link, okay? They are government subsidized and haven't made a single dime, and even they admit they won't scale to the levels we are talking, they only speak of using their design as a supplement not a replacement for what we have. So you show us some real numbers that shows us you can build enough capacity even in 2 decades to give us just what we are using now, not counting what we will be using 20 years from now. Please, prove me wrong.
Because they are planning on royally screwing the DVD by mail service and don't want it to kill Netflix? Its no secret the USPS is going under, they are broke as a joke and getting ready to close branches left and right. Add to this the teabaggers that wouldn't allow a tax raise on the top 1% even if the bridges all collapsed and planes were falling out of the sky and you can see the writing on the wall. The only way to save the USPS will be to raise the holy hell out of prices.
Now as we saw even a small price increase when it comes to Netflix has people bailing in droves, so what is Netflix to do? Simple you spin off the losing model and keep the one that will remain profitable after our spineless president (I swear he makes Carter look like a tough leader) bends over for the teabaggers yet again.
Of course now that Blockbuster has been bought out and got that nice cash infusion they may be in trouble anyway on the streaming side, and with a Redbox on every corner their DVD by mail biz is DOA. Final prediction? Netflix gone in less than 3, 4 tops.
I'd rather run into them than get a visit from Centauri any day of the week. I mean I like a challenge, but a gung ho iguana and one fighter against an entire armada? There is a challenge and then there is suicidal.
As for TFA, were they surprised? Humans looooove puzzles and if you can make a problem into a puzzle game you'll have plenty of folks lining up to work on your "game". I think they should be really pushing this along with the "at home" GPU programs as you'd be surprised at how many people out there would be happy to help but they don't know they exist. I personally have been informing every customer with a halfway decent GPU and quite a few have joined one of the at home projects. I myself will be joining as soon as I can get around to finding a suitable GPU cooler replacement, those HD48xx series run too damned hot with the OEM cooler. The moron that decided a single slot cooler for a chip with a 256bit pipeline and hundreds of stream processors was a good idea really needed to be smacked.
but they really need to get the word out. Send someone to good Morning America and some of the other major talk shows and get some buzz built up, as I bet there are tons of folks out there that would be happy to join in and help, if only they knew it existed.
Actually I'd say the bigger problem is all the run off getting into the oceans. Run off gets into oceans, little fish eat run off, big fish eat little fish, seagull eats big fish, it don't really sound like a case for Kojak here.
I think we really need to be worried about the core cause of all this resistance which is the agro-business pumping everything that breathes full of antibiotics to increase yields. We need to be saving antibiotics for humans, cut off all tax breaks and subsidies for farms that refuse to quit using antibiotics, basically if there ever was a job for regulation THIS would be the one.
Sadly since Citizens United they could be feeding the cows Soylent Green for all the congress critters are gonna care as they get their big fat checks free and legal now. How sad is it when the only real hope of doing anything about this corrupt mess lies in the hands of a couple of comedians, aka Colbert and Stewart? I guess the days of Woodward and Bernstein and real hard hitting reporters are long gone now.
But one of these days one of these nasties is gonna find a way to really spread through the population and we'll get to have another black plague, and in large part it will be due to nothing but greed and the endless drive for higher profits. Why is it I can't even muster up any outrage anymore? this kind of evil BS is so ingrained in the system now I can't even build up a hearty "meh" about it anymore. Just another way greed is cocking things up for everyone, shock gasp surprise.
You'd think they'd advertise such a cool feature, wouldn't you? Just shows what a shitty CEO Ballmer is. I found out about it by accident when my dad plugged in his mike and typed mike into the search box trying to find out where he needed to be to change the settings Up popped "voice recognition" and he started working with it. works about 50/50 with dad, but a lot of that is due to the meds he's on making his voice change timber. Some days he sounds normal, other days like Slappy White, and I think having the voice just keep switching like that throws it off. It did the same with Dragonspeak when he gave it a spin.
But barring that it does work pretty well for typing letters, at least for dad. Me I can type quicker than I can talk most of the time so I don't really see the point for me but for those like dad that have eyesight problems or just those that want to control their PC ala Star trek it IS pretty cool nonetheless.
Name the part and I'll be happy to find the driver FOR you. Just let me know which one you tried so I don't duplicate the effort. You can then get a copy of "Windows 7 Tiny" to test it, which only uses 3Gb of HDD space installed.
Hell did you just try using the Vista driver? because the Vista/7 driver model is damned near identical, just as you could run Win2K/XP/2K3 drivers interchangeably unless you were switching from 32bit to 64bit. I personally have Vista X64 drivers running on my Windows 7 install simply because nobody bothered to write a Windows 7 driver for my USB capture card. Works beautifully BTW, great picture and integrates perfectly with WMC.
BTW did you notice I got modded down for daring to try to help you? How sad that the Moonies here.....err...I mean FOSSies, have such a groupthink circle jerk that the one and ONLY posting allowed within a thousand yards of a FOSSie story is "Gee Biff, isn't Linux perfect? Why it sure is Skip, and RMS's farts smell like roses!"
Sadly as you found out trying to run it on a laptop and I as a retailer found out trying to actually sell Linux it is MORE WORSE NOW THAN EVER thanks to Torvalds constant kernel fiddling and the driver mess. Out of the 8 machines I picked at random to test Linux on, tried a half dozen distros BTW, guess how many survived with full functionality after first upgrade? NONE. Zip, zero, nada, squat. Wireless, sound, video, Ethernet, there was ALWAYS something broken.
I could provide links to fellow retailers running away from Linux, or point out that Dell has to run their own repo just to keep drivers from breaking, but what's the point? Just like Moonies they'll just stick their fingers in their ears and go "CLI is leet! copypasta into term makes our neckbeard thick! You must be M$ Ninja!" and go back to their circle jerk, so why bother. let them enjoy 1% and ignore their crazy asses I say.
Riiight. You DO realize that everything he said is actually true, yes? That at our current rate of growth the ONLY choices are nuke, coal, and oil, yes? Because the only other choice is to lock ourselves into a level being used currently and refuse to add capacity. Then we can enjoy rolling black outs, perhaps weeks at a time with no power at all as the strain blows out parts of the grid, or maybe you'd prefer tossing our PCs and ACs and going back to ice boxes and a big fan to cool the whole house?
Like it or not folks renewables simply don't scale up to the levels we are talking about, not without MASSIVE losses of land which with a growing population isn't really doable. Think the government is in your business now? How about if your wife has to piss in a cup monthly to make sure she is taking her pill as we put a Chinese style one child per couple rule in place?
Solar? Uses massive amounts of land and the best ones, which cost a ton of money BTW, are looking at more fossil fuels to make them than you get back out in energy and are tops 20% efficient. Wind? doesn't blow all the time and certainly won't ramp up between 3PM-7PM when everyone gets home and turns their devices on. Geothermal? earthquakes. Wave tech? See wind.
Its not like we have a choice here folks, and if the NIMBYs would quit acting like asses, which BTW I propose any NIMBY that blocks power creation? should be forced to be self sustaining. No power plant? Then no power FOR YOU. I bet that would make them STFU real quick. On the flip side i propose the owner of the plant has to live within 4 miles of the plant WITH his/her family, give them a reason not to skimp on safety huh? But with the new designs nuke can be a hell of a lot safer, cleaner than coal and oil, and can ramp up with need. Hell with the thorium design we could even get rid of transfer losses by building a mini reactor in each city above a certain size instead of running juice halfway across the countryside!
Exactly! For an example of catering to the sample audience look at I Am legend, which I'll admit wasn't a great version of that story to start with (The Vincent Price version #1, Heston #2, Legend #3 in my book) but look what they did.
In the original ending the doctor figures out that they are not animals, and are simply trying to rescue their brethren from HIM who he realizes is being the giant douche. Instead of this ending that made it more like the book and hence the name "I Am Legend" because he IS the monster, instead because the audience didn't like that they replaced it with a Michael Bay style "blow shit up real good" ending which made no fucking sense, and totally threw away all they had been building up towards, such as the "monsters" laying traps for him when they were supposed to be mindless, etc.
While I thought Lucas with his Greedo shot first horseshit was rightly called out for being moronic and changing the character for no reason on the flip side if you let modern audiences design the movies it is gonna be a Michael Bay bomb fest, and all movies will be "Smart ass good guy falls for bimbette and blows shit up REAL good". Frankly we have enough Michael bay tripe in this world, do we REALLY want to be catering to those that keep buying that dreck?
Yeah that is what they said with holographic discs and I still haven't seen anyone offer one of those at anything less than truly insane prices. just because you can build something for X doesn't mean you'll be able to build something for Y, sometimes things just don't scale. I bet being nanowire it is a royal PITA to deal with and automation when it comes to wires that tiny probably won't be easy.
Remember they thought the same would happen with core memory too, but by the time they found a way to produce it completely by automation it was obsolete. So while I wish them nothing but luck, as I wouldn't mind a cheap touchscreen for my little netbook, I wouldn't hold my breath.
Question: Have you tried SIW to find out what the exact chips you are running that are having Win 7 driver problems, and then replacing them with an updated driver from another model with the same chip?
Because I have found a LOT of the time when it comes to laptops when the OEM says "Windows X not supported" it means "We didn't bother with a driver for it" and I bet my last nickel that there is NO part on your machines that SOME OEM didn't write a better Win 7 driver for than what you have now.
Here is how you fix it, find out the name of your device that is having problems, lets say it is the R690m. Then all you do is Google "R690m Windows 7 driver" and choose the latest one you can find. Then simply extract the driver from the .exe (both winRAR and 7-Zip can do this) and then as I put it "Rub windows nose in it" by installing the driver manually which if you are on /. I'm sure you know how to do a manual driver install.
That's it! In less than 30 minutes you'll have a much better windows 7 driver and all those boo boos go bye bye. you would be surprised how often I have to do that trick, especially with wireless. just last week I had an HP with Vista only drivers and when the guy tried to install 7 himself it hosed his wireless. I just used SIW to find out it was a Ralink chip, found a Ralink driver for win 7, rubbed windows nose in it, and there you go. One more happy customer.
You just have to remember that with Windows there is ALWAYS more than one way to skin a cat. sometimes it is the most simple way, sometimes you need to add a step or two, but you should always be able to find a way around the boo boo. Hell I have a granny that bought the Win 7 HP 3 pack and decided to have me load the last license on "her spare" which was a 2.2Ghz P4 that was old as dirt. took a little tweaking but now she is happily running on it while I have her new machine here in the shop. somehow she managed to completely wipe ALL the fonts off the machine, ugh. I swear that woman could kill a Sherman tank with a toothbrush.
You know if there are any trolls here it is you and your fellow zealots, lying your asses off that "Linux is ready for the masses!" and "Linux is ready for the common man!" and then when it is pointed out YOU COULD NOT BE MORE WRONG the ONLY thing you can do is stick your fingers in your ears and go "You are not leet! You are a M$ Ninja! You must be troll or shill, you no drink koolaid and believe our lies!"
You know what you and your fellow zealots remind me of? moonies, that's what. Just like a Moonie you could bring 100 scholars to say "That is completely wrong, not even close" and they just stick their fingers in their ears and say "You were sent to destroy us by the enemy!" while ignoring the fact that the "enemy" doesn't give a shit about you because they have seen the writing on the wall and Linux is going nowhere. that is why MSFT changed their Linux "threat level" from red to green because just as I said you won't listen, you won't accept that users won't do things your way, so you'll rot in last place.
And you DO realize your ENTIRE post is a classic example of "moving the goal posts" yes? What have we seen here repeatedly? Why "Linux is ready for the masses!" and "Linux is ready for the common man!" and what do you and the other zealots trot out when I point out that is a lie? "Why why why...we don't want common people anyway! They are not leet! Doing things the stupid way makes you a hacker! makes your neckbeard full! You are a M$ Ninja!"
Lies, bullshit, and excuses. that is ALL the Linux community has to offer anymore. Frankly I'm gonna LMAO when Google just takes the whole thing away from you. See they have seen the word is consumers, and they will just lock down the droid and tell you to fuck right off. Oh but you'll line up to kiss their ass anyway, because at least SOMEONE is using linux, right? you've been below the margin for error for 20 damned years now, right down there with haiku and OS/2 and all the other hobby bullshit. NO real growth, NO real gains, and I'd be happy to give you the link showing Linux is LOSING share on the server, but why bother? Like a Moonie you'll just stick your fingers in your ears and go "We are leet! U r shill, or M$ Ninja!" . Enjoy last place loser, you certainly have earned it.
Put that little green thing away Yoda, nobody is impressed.
As for TFA while its nice to make all these little guesses how will we know if any are right when it would take a couple of dozen lifetimes at top speed for a probe to get anywhere close to one of these?
That is why I always find stories like this depressing. its like "Hey here is another cool thing you'll never set foot on or even see video of isn't that great? Oh and its probably full of three titted hookers and beer, too bad you'll never get to find out huh?"
As someone who grew up on Battlestar and Star trek these articles just remind me of how much cool stuff there is out there that we will NEVER get to see close up in my lifetime. That really sucks.
Yeah if you like throwing away money! my PC is going on 3 years old now, its gone from a dual to a quad, gone from 2Gb to 4Gb to 8Gb of RAM, gone from IGP to HD4650 to HD4850, and from a 500Gb to 2 500Gb to 1Tb to 3Tb of HDD. For you to do the same you would have had to toss your machine at least twice, possibly more. Talk about wasteful!
The easiest and cheapest way if the wires aren't needing to be moved is simple plastic zip ties. they are dirt cheap, once in place won't be coming off, and can quickly clean up even the biggest mess. And I should know as having a 4 port KVM switch does tend to get messy. But by having them zip tied there is only a single KVM cable neatly tucked under my table for when I want to play with a machine not on my network, everything else is zip tied to the back of the desk. easy peasy.
THANK YOU...you see? It is THAT, that total bullshit elitist with NO numbers to back it up attitude that dooms Linux to nowhere land. Did you know that Win9x/Win2K together equal MORE than your OS? Two completely abandoned Windows beats your latest and greatest?
But I hate to burst your bubble, but copypasta into a term doesn't give you magical gonad powers, nor will it make Angelina Jolie suddenly show up and be impressed by your "hacker" skillz. THERE IS A REASON why everyone abandoned CLI and it is because it is an unintuitive pita irritating little bitch.
As I said, and as was told and confirmed to me by a Linux admin with over a decade at his job and a half a dozen certs. you give both a Linux admin AND a Win admin a server task that NEITHER has ever done before and guess what? The win admin will win every single time because CLI is powerful IF AND ONLY IF you know EXACTLY what you need to do and the steps to accomplish it, period. All the CLI is is a giant game of Simon, where you memorize and parrot back.
But hey, you wanna be lower than even a crappy Java based phone OS? No skin off of me friend. when all those millions of boxes hit EOL all those shops like mine will just IGNORE YOUR OS and put Win 8 on the ones that will run it, and strip the rest. sure it'll be a massive pile of machines that COULD have been running Linux, but so what? you don't want any unwashed masses touching your precious bell bottomed OS, right? enjoy last place.
Dude, friend, mind a little advice? buy yourself some cheap off lease desktops and laptops and rent a little spot and open your own shop. you'll never get rich but you know what? PEOPLE LISTEN TO YOU, they don't treat you like a moron, just the opposite, people treat you like you are a genius and will always defer to your judgement, you get to help out real folks who are real grateful, and if you aren't married you'll also find women like a guy that's handy.
And I know EXACTLY how you feel, as I'd have chest pains and a pretty much constant headache. I literally ate so many BC powders that a prick on the finger would bleed for an hour, the stress was literally killing me. When I told my nephews what I was thinking of they said "Please do uncle, we'd rather have you alive than have your money" and then proceeded to tell me how corpse like I looked.
Now I have my color back, I spend my weekends playing bass in a trio just to enjoy being creative again, life is good. I don't make anything like I once did, and it can be feast or famine, but you know what? I'm a thousand times happier and feel a hell of a lot better than I ever did dealing with corp. And it is damned nice to know there are hundreds of machines built and set up by me that are safe, secure, and run well, making their owners happy. I even had the local checkout girl ask me "Hey, would you please follow me to the parking lot and tell me if you can upgrade this computer that was given to me?" and I laughed hard when I saw it. She started to cry and I said "Oh I'm not laughing at you honey, I'm laughing at the fact that was one of my first builds and even has my initials on the bottom, see?". It had been running for nearly 7 years without fail, the chip had finally just gotten too slow for all the FB bling bling crap. I knew money was tight for her so I sold her an old P4 3GHz board with 1Gb of RAM for $80 and threw in the install. Now it is doing everything she wants and even helps her kids with homework thanks to the Open Office I installed.
Its a nice feeling helping folks, and makes the lower pay WELL worth it IMHO.
Don't you just love the guy above you that said I shouldn't be working on anyone's network if I can't do custom images? When we are talking about GAMER RIGS where the braintrust bought bleeding edge OCed from the factory everything?
You nailed why I had to shitcan the whole thing but I would just add this dipshit bought EVERYTHING OCed, and I DO mean everything. We are talking RAM that ran out of spec, boards that ran hot, he treated the whole thing like one big LAN party. The amount of time I would have had to blow dealing with that bullshit would have ended up costing them more than me just calling HP and getting some bog standard business desktops (which is what I fricking had in the first place) where I could actually deploy a single image and where I could have spares sitting there for failures.
But anyone who has dealt with seriously "leet" gamer crap knows it can be some seriously unstable funky hardware that needs to be fussed over, and sure as hell has no place in a law firm!
Uhhh...you mean included in a standard desktop like say... all versions of Windows 7 except Starter? While I haven't personally tried it I hear its quite nice.
As for TFA if they can score football and basketball they have a shot, but if they don't get the content they are boned. I guess it will all come down to how much Ballmer is willing to lose to get a real toehold in the market, because as we saw with the original Xbox MSFT isn't above taking a loss if it'll get them a good foothold into a new market they desire.
Congrats, you are part of the whole 0.001% that use a CLI friend! Now be honest here, no fibbing....do you HONESTLY believe you will get the other 99.9% of the planet to do as YOU do, or do you think you will have better luck getting them to use your product (because that's what it is if you want ANY share, if you don't call it a hobbyist OS and just be happy with what you have) if you give them what THEY want?
I repeat, do you know what the definition of insanity is? its doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Where was Linux 4 years ago? 1% Where was it two years ago? 1%...guess where it'll be in two years if you stay on this path? Don't need Kojak to solve the case, the answer is 1%.
If you want to be a hobbyist OS? That is COMPLETELY fine, no worries, I'm happy for you. But you can't have your cake and eat it to, you can't say "Linux is ready for the desktop!" or "Linux is as good as Windows and OSX!" while relying so heavily on CLI because IT IS NOT EVEN CLOSE, its a lie. YOU know this, I know this, and the numbers don't lie friend. I can give you link after link of retailers dropping your product if you'd like.
So make the choice, step away from the bell bottoms and CLI and join the 21st century, or stop bullshitting and pretending Linux is usable for the masses when they will NEVER EVER NO MATTER WHAT YOU SAY OR DO embrace CLI like its the damned force. they DO NOT CARE how powerful it is, they DO NOT CARE if you think it is easy, they DO NOT CARE if you think copypasta is the correct answer to a problem. you WILL do it their way or you WILL gain no share, its simple as that.
Choose now, because in 2014 millions of XP machines will go EOL and you COULD grab a good share of those, if only you'd change. the choice is yours, get busy growing or get busy dying I believe is the phrase.
Sadly when you are dealing with a doofus corp you can't even hire from within because middle management is usually dipshits as well.
I had one client that I told I didn't have time to be their admin after setting up their system, but I'd put them in touch with a couple of competent admins that were rock solid, take their pick. What did they do? Some PHB decided 'they cost too much! i know a guy who's a wiz at computers! I bet he could do it" and I bet the admins out there can already see where THIS is going.
Well I get called back in a little over a year after their "wiz" got caught looking at porn and running a Q3 server when he was supposed to be working and they were having "little problems"...little problems my Irish ass. this genius had GOT RID OF THE DESKTOPS that I had bought because they were 'too weak" and built gamer desktops piecemeal from tigerdirect, so give up making images or deploying anything as NOTHING matched, got rid of my standard Sonicwall for a bunch of those shitty blue DLink routers and was using a bunch of HOME CONNECTIONS from various ISPs. Somebody want more speed? he'd hire another ISP. Needless to say I had to shitcan the whole thing but the PHB had already gotten his bonus and moved on so didn't get the blame.
And it is THAT, that right there, that to me marks the dufus problem in a nutshell. it is upward failure where doing dumbshit yields a quick gain followed by a HORRIBLE outcome, but the gain gets the dufus moved up or a "selling point" on his resume and he/she is out of their before the excrement hits the bladed cooling device.
I mean how many guys here have dealt with a company butchering IT and then they acted amazed when the shit falls apart? or tries to get too much done with too little and the first real problem is a trainwreck of biblical proportions? That is why I got out of corporate, got tired at beating my head against the wall while dealing with shit that went right off the stupid meter scale. Hell I have a buddy still in who actually got drug to regional HQ by a PHB that wanted him fired because, and I quote "You have NO RIGHT to tell me who I can speak to! You WILL let my emails through from Melissa through or you're fired!" That's right folks, he was fighting FOR the right to get infected! Lucky the regional head knew a tiny bit and watched the news so he knew what the Melissa bug was, otherwise he could have been fired.
I just can't take that level of dumbshit anymore, I just can't. At least with SOHOs, SMBs, and Home Users, they KNOW they don't know shit and that is why they hire me, so that I can tell them what to do and help them be smart and safe. With corporate there always seemed to be someone who knew just enough to be dangerous as hell, and had just enough power to serious fuck the whole works. Some guy who thinks he knows IT, or some bean counter who think the gear will last another two years when they cheapskated and bought cheap shit in the first place that started dying when the warranty went, just ignorant dumb stupid ass...ugh. If you still do corporate? My prayers are with you friend, may you have a strong stomach and have an immunity to headaches.
Not for consumers. Most of my customers are now on Win 7 X64 and frankly none of them know this because they just go "clicky clicky next next next" and it "just works". Hell I run 15 year old games next to the latest and greatest on Win 7 X64, it don't care. Sure if you went looking around the file system it is ugly as fuck, but who does that? You could restrict access to C: (which I often do to my more accident prone users) and they'd never notice. Just have all their user files on D: and use junctions to make apps think they are dumping in C:/Users when they are dumping on D: My Documents and you are good to go.
So I'd say MSFT did a damned good job on the switch. When I first heard of X64 I thought it'd be a royal PITA like the switch from 16 to 32bit was. The first time I went to install a 32bit app on WinXP X64 I literally cringed, waiting for the crash but....nope. it just worked. Windows didn't care, and the ONLY app I couldn't run was a Win95 era DB I had used for CDs. One app out of hundreds, just one. that is pretty damned good for a complete arch switch if you ask me.
You may be happy at the idea of "pulling an Apple" and losing backwards compatibility, but I say it'd be suicide. Folks would just keep the last BC version and not touch the new one. what sells Windows is I can drop a brand new Win 7 machine on a network with 2K,XP,and Vista machines and ALL the software "just works". If they kill 32bit software support it would be the death of Windows. maybe in another decade, once as you pointed out all the shitty software vendors have finally been drug kicking and screaming into 64bit land, but until then? Suicide friend, sheer suicide.
What's to believe? Ballmer has already said they ARE gonna put Windows 8 on ARM, its a done deal. Have you SEEN metro? Its a fricking cellphone GUI, and about as dumb as Unity on Ubuntu. the only saving grace for Win 8 is you only have to kill a single service to get the real desktop GUI back.
And sadly as someone who makes his living building and supporting machines that run MSFT products while I'd like to believe they aren't dumb as fuck, unfortunately we have evidence to back up the dumb as fuck theory. If they aren't dumb as fuck, how do you explain not giving experienced office users a way to go back to the classic menu? How do you explain the Kin? The Zune? Having Windows 8 AND WinPhone running on ARM?
Its actually simple friend, its the simple fact that BALLMER IS A SHITTY CEO like Carly and Hurd at HP, and his idea of "innovation" is going "Me too! Oooohhh me too!" and then putting out a shitty half baked product into an established market and expecting the MSFT name to carry it. hell the only thing that saved their OS division was the fact they brought in the MS Office engineers after the Vista debacle and gave them free rein. if Ballmer would have gotten his way Win 7 would have probably looked like a damned iPhone!
so I hope you're right friend, God i hope you're right. I spent a SOLID year and a half doing nothing but wiping out Vista installs, man I do NOT want to do that again, okay? do you hear me MSFT? QUIT COCKING THINGS UP! Win 7 is good, leave poor Win 7 alone!
Welcome brother! Coffee and donuts are in the back and I'll be giving a lecture on "How to never be hit by the scourge of WinRot" at 2PM, be sure to catch it. For those that won't be there the correct answer is "TuneUp Utilities" which will kill WinRot dead.
And I'm sure to get hate for pointing this out, but who gives a crap, I got more Karma than God. You wanna know why Linux is stuck a a lousy 1%, even lower than a Java based phone OS? Its actually VERY simple and easy to explain, and no, it isn't some conspiracy by Gates and the Illuminati, they are too busy using the World bank to take over the planet.
It is because YOU DON'T LISTEN, neither to consumers nor to the world at large. Haven't you gotten the memo? the word is CONSUMERS in 50 foot flaming neon, so what do you do? "Hey lets put a link to bash on the desktop! It'll make our neckbeards thick and copypasta in a terminal makes you leet!". it is like the way RMS still calls everyone "hackers" like he is at a computer club in 79, it isn't even funny anymore, its just.....kinda sad, that's what it is.
In case you haven't gotten the memo THE WORLD IS GUI NOW and NOBODY, but nobody, well except for server admins, use terms for anything anymore. Do you see a terminal link on the desktop of Windows 7? Nope you got to go to start...all programs... accessories...and there it is, buried as far down as they can because NOBODY USES IT. Oh and before anyone wastes their time pointing out Powershell look it up on MSDN, the articles are ALL "How to manage YOUR SERVER with Powershell" because it ain't for consumers folks! hell look at the closest thing Linux has ever had to a hit, Android. What is it? Why its all GUI, no CLI, clicky clicky GUI city!
You've got this great OS, with tons of software, all free, nice looking DEs, all this wonderful stuff, yet your stubborn refusal to wake up and smell the 21st century is dooming it to a niche OS so tiny Java craphones kick its ass. If there is ANY CLI then YOU HAVE FAILED. if the one and ONLY answer is "open up bash and type"? Then YOU HAVE FAILED. hell look at the biggest weakness Linux has right now, driver issues. Do you have a simple "roll back drivers" button? How about a "find drivers" button, both of which your competitor has had for years? NOPE, all you have is "open up bash and type" which as I pointed out was fail.
Do you know what the definition of insanity is? Its doing the same thing over and ov er and expecting a different result. you've had 20 damned years folks, you are STILL dead last. Doesn't that give you a clue? How about the fact that a decade old Windows beat the shit out of Linux on netbooks? LISTEN TO THE CONSUMERS and change, or stay last place. because you will NEVER get them to join in the forum dance, you will NEVER get them to "open up bash and type" and you will NEVER get them to "embrace the power of CLI" like its the damned force, okay? Is that REALLY so hard to understand? Hell even on servers Windows is winning at a 70%/30% split. Why is that? simple, as a Linux admin told me "Linux is powerful if you know EXACTLY what you need to do and the steps to do it. Windows is quicker if you are given a task where you've never had to do it before" why? Because GUIs are intuitive and reward exploration, and CLIs give you a blinking cursor and a shitload of man pages, that's why!
Its just human nature folks, humans are visually oriented creatures that like to touch and explore. GUIs enhance and appeal to these parts of our nature. CLIs are about as UNINTUITIVE an interface as you could possibly design and the only reward you'll get for exploring is frustration or breaking something, this is why they fell out of favor for EVERYONE BUT YOU. But hanging onto a terminal like Disco Stu hanging onto his bell bottoms won't make the term come back, hell bell bottoms will come back first .