I've often been asked to teach the computing-impaired-- really technophobic people, how to use computers. These people want EXACT instructions on how to accomplish tasks. They are ok with a command line, they can remember precise commands, but they are totally lost with a GUI, because the Icons and windows are not always in the same place.
I sometimes have to try to tell them how to do things over the phone -- I feel your pain with trying to dictate GUI instructions over the phone!
A GUI is good for simplifying common, well-defined tasks. If you need to do anything out of the ordinary that the GUI designers didn't think of, then forget it.
In short, a GUI makes easy things easy, and hard things impossible. You never want to totally throw it away.
I haven't spent any significant time using W2K betas, our local copy took several minutes to display the start menu after clicking the Start button, but what do they mean by feature-rich? It seems that a good Linux distro comes with far more tools and Applications out of the box than any version of Windows I have ever seen.
Are they talking about these wizards that can "automatically configure XYZ" for you then fail or crash during the auto-configuration because your system is slightly non-standard?"
True story: I've used a serial mouse, and just bought a PS/2 mouse. When I booted Windows, Windows detected that I had new hardware, and automatically removed the video driver for me! It took about six reboots to get the system right.
I found the criticism of Linux' TCP/IP rather laughable, because I remember not very long ago one of the primary criticisms of Linux was that it didn't have TCP/IP
Huh? I've been using Linux for five years, and it's had TCP/IP for at least that long. In the computer world, five years is an eon, not "not very long ago"
The new soap opera starring an OS which has been down on its luck that decides that if it just gets a makeover, and dumps its fiance for the hot, young penguin chick that everyone wants to be seen with, things will turn out ok.
Yeah, you're missing a lot. For one, you are doing the mistake and equating more MHz for more performance. The 680x0 CPU's give you a lot more power pr. MHz than any x86 CPU ever has.
That was true in days of 8086, 286 and 386es, but today's Intel and Clone processors do more per CPU cycle than any 680x0 processor that I'm aware of.
Microsoft, if you fault them everywhere else, is extremely good at making user friendly interfaces.
Microsoft is good at making interfaces that appear user friendly. They will claim that they can automatically configure XYZ, and then fail half-way through the process. They offer no details on why it failed
The fact that it takes them 4 revisions to get it right (four revisions they make us pay for)
NT 4 is right? (Ok I know the first version of NT was labeled NT 3.1, so 4 should be only 2 or 3)
The development tools that are used contribute to bloat as well. In the early 80's, when PC's and other computers didn't have much memory, developers often used Assembly Language, resulting in very lean, fast programs.
Of course writing a big app in assembly will drive you insane. As PCs got bigger, C and C++ were used, and developers increaingly linked in bigger and bigger libraries. This helped contribute to the bloat.
We had to upgrade an (forgot HP model name) from 10.10 to 10.20. We used the "Easy, Really", "Painless", Ignite/UX tool to perform the upgrade. The upgrade failed, and totally hosed all the filesystems. Then we discovered that nobody had ever done a backup on the system because "it wasn't in production yet."
That's my most painful HP/UX memory, although I can't say that my experiences have been as bad as yours!
For a comparison on Unix workstations, they sure managed to keep bringing up how some of these systems can run NT. What is more useless than NT on Alpha anyway?
Yes, it's exactly like a religion. RMS is their God, and as such he is above criticism, the FSF web page is their Bible, and FSF Evangilists dispense URLs the same way Christian Evangilists dispense Bible chapter references. (e.g. John 1:20).
I can feel Tom's frustration with them, I have read much of their web site, and I agree with alot of it, but there are things there that I find very disturbing, so I can't agree with them 100%. But if you try to state your opinion (even in a non-flamebait manner) you will attract flames. (Ok, there are reasonable people in the GNU camp, but they tend to get drowned out amid the flames)
Looking through the comments, there are a disturbing number of "That's not funny/Why is Tom so mean/How can anyone like RMS" comments, showing that these people do truly seem to lack a sense of humor when it comes to this stuff.
I found this piece of satire to be right on the mark. It reflects how silly RMS and the FSF can be at times.
It also shows what a poor name Free Software is when 95% of the people think "Free beer" not "Free speech" when they hear it. It sometimes seems that FSF people spend more energy explaining the meaning than they do coding
If their customers want something other than an MS solution, then their attitude must be adjusted. The customer is wrong, and MS must show them how they are wrong.
When people choose to dump their MS OS and go with Linux, I've never heard "because Linux serves more pages per second than NT" given as a reason.
The reasons are usually one of the following:
Better Stability Tired of being locked into MS-only solutions No license fees Doesn't need an expensive hardware upgrade No annoying features like animated paperclips Linux doesn't pretend to be smarter than you, and then fail at it. No registry which causes more pain and grief than it actually solves.
It doesn't really matter than NT beats Linux in this test. Sure we should fix the problems, but NT is still NT with all the liabilities which it has become famous for.
According to the book, "The Microsoft Files", Bill Gates' mother, a wealthy Seattle socialite, knew a IBM bigwig socially, and got the ball rolling for Bill.
With 8,203,248,398,439,298,283 lines of code and counting (or whatever the actual number is). W2K is the Jabba the Hutt of Operating Systems. It will be crushed by its own weight.
The way I see it, as long as the Feds are paying for this stuff, they have every right to dictate how the money is spent. The real solution is to stop relying on Federal funding for everything, and start funding these things on a more local level.
Would it still be a human if you just clone the body, but not the brain?
How do you do that? Today we have the technology to clone embryoes, which develop into full human beings. If you take an arm from a clone, the clone is going to be mighty upset Even if we could produce a body without a brain, the body would die because it needs the brain to function
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I've often been asked to teach the computing-impaired-- really technophobic people, how to use computers. These people want EXACT instructions on how to accomplish tasks. They are ok with a command line, they can remember precise commands, but they are totally lost with a GUI, because the Icons and windows are not always in the same place.
I sometimes have to try to tell them how to do things over the phone -- I feel your pain with trying to dictate GUI instructions over the phone!
A GUI is good for simplifying common, well-defined tasks. If you need to do anything out of the ordinary that the GUI designers didn't think of, then forget it.
In short, a GUI makes easy things easy, and hard things impossible. You never want to totally throw it away.
I haven't spent any significant time using W2K betas, our local copy took several minutes to display the start menu after clicking the Start button, but what do they mean by feature-rich? It seems that a good Linux distro comes with far more tools and Applications out of the box than any version of Windows I have ever seen.
Are they talking about these wizards that can "automatically configure XYZ" for you then fail or crash during the auto-configuration because your system is slightly non-standard?"
True story: I've used a serial mouse, and just bought a PS/2 mouse. When I booted Windows, Windows detected that I had new hardware, and automatically removed the video driver for me! It took about six reboots to get the system right.
primary criticisms of Linux was that it didn't have TCP/IP
Huh? I've been using Linux for five years, and it's had TCP/IP for at least that long. In the computer world, five years is an eon, not "not very long ago"
The new soap opera starring an OS which has been down on its luck that decides that if it just gets a makeover, and dumps its fiance for the hot, young penguin chick that everyone wants to be seen with, things will turn out ok.
Since Amiga/Linux would be the Linux kernel without the GNU tool chain, the GNU/Linux moniker is inappropriate here.
performance. The 680x0 CPU's give you a lot more power pr. MHz than any x86 CPU ever has.
That was true in days of 8086, 286 and 386es, but today's Intel and Clone processors do more per CPU cycle than any 680x0 processor that I'm aware of.
Um, right now Linux is more mainstream than Amiga is.
The 68000 has 32bit internal registers, 24-bit addressing and a 16-bit bus. It is usually considered a 16-bit system, although it's a hybrid.
ROTFLOL!
Well, Amiga had Multitasking, but as for User interface -- Ugh! Atari's GEM interface, as bad as it was, beat the crap out of it.
Microsoft is good at making interfaces that appear user friendly. They will claim that they can automatically configure XYZ, and then fail half-way through the process. They offer no details on why it failed
The fact that it takes them 4 revisions to get it right (four revisions they make us pay for)NT 4 is right? (Ok I know the first version of NT was labeled NT 3.1, so 4 should be only 2 or 3)
The development tools that are used contribute to bloat as well. In the early 80's, when PC's and other computers didn't have much memory, developers often used Assembly Language, resulting in very lean, fast programs.
Of course writing a big app in assembly will drive you insane. As PCs got bigger, C and C++ were used, and developers increaingly linked in bigger and bigger libraries. This helped contribute to the bloat.
Every program expands until it can read mail!
We had to upgrade an (forgot HP model name) from 10.10 to 10.20. We used the "Easy, Really", "Painless", Ignite/UX tool to perform the upgrade. The upgrade failed, and totally hosed all the filesystems. Then we discovered that nobody had ever done a backup on the system because "it wasn't in production yet."
That's my most painful HP/UX memory, although I can't say that my experiences have been as bad as yours!
For a comparison on Unix workstations, they sure managed to keep bringing up how some of these systems can run NT. What is more useless than NT on Alpha anyway?
Yes, it's exactly like a religion. RMS is their God, and as such he is above criticism, the FSF web page is their Bible, and FSF Evangilists dispense URLs the same way Christian Evangilists dispense Bible chapter references. (e.g. John 1:20).
I can feel Tom's frustration with them, I have read much of their web site, and I agree with alot of it, but there are things there that I find very disturbing, so I can't agree with them 100%. But if you try to state your opinion (even in a non-flamebait manner) you will attract flames. (Ok, there are reasonable people in the GNU camp, but they tend to get drowned out amid the flames)
Looking through the comments, there are a disturbing number of "That's not funny/Why is Tom so mean/How can anyone like RMS" comments, showing that these people do truly seem to lack a sense of humor when it comes to this stuff.
I found this piece of satire to be right on the mark. It reflects how silly RMS and the FSF can be at times.
It also shows what a poor name Free Software is when 95% of the people think "Free beer" not "Free speech" when they hear it. It sometimes seems that FSF people spend more energy explaining the meaning than they do coding
That was a rhetorical question, right?
If their customers want something other than an MS solution, then their attitude must be adjusted. The customer is wrong, and MS must show them how they are wrong.
When people choose to dump their MS OS and go with Linux, I've never heard "because Linux serves more pages per second than NT" given as a reason.
The reasons are usually one of the following:
Better Stability
Tired of being locked into MS-only solutions
No license fees
Doesn't need an expensive hardware upgrade
No annoying features like animated paperclips
Linux doesn't pretend to be smarter than you, and then fail at it.
No registry which causes more pain and grief than it actually solves.
It doesn't really matter than NT beats Linux in this test. Sure we should fix the problems, but NT is still NT with all the liabilities which it has become famous for.
According to the book, "The Microsoft Files", Bill Gates' mother, a wealthy Seattle socialite, knew a IBM bigwig socially, and got the ball rolling for Bill.
With 8,203,248,398,439,298,283 lines of code and counting (or whatever the actual number is). W2K is the Jabba the Hutt of Operating Systems. It will be crushed by its own weight.
The way I see it, as long as the Feds are paying for this stuff, they have every right to dictate how the money is spent. The real solution is to stop relying on Federal funding for everything, and start funding these things on a more local level.
How do you do that? Today we have the technology to clone embryoes, which develop into full human beings. If you take an arm from a clone, the clone is going to be mighty upset Even if we could produce a body without a brain, the body would die because it needs the brain to function