Read it again. It was much as I described. It was his personal stuff that he lost, but I grant you that the article wasn't very clear. No need to call me an idiot though! That was not nice.....
What he probably done was to load up everything on a single drive and carry it around with him. That's stupid for so many reasons, but a lot of people do it. They set their removable drives with all their pics, video etc and carry it around with them, like a photo album, using it whenever and however they want. Odds on, although it's a 'backup device' it's more probably a way of moving his data from point A to point B rather than a true backup. But he's still an idiot. So is his daughter and son (who's so embarrassed that he changed his name... I'll give him that!) Imagine getting your HD and carrying it around with you. Geez! Don't drop it!!! That's just plain stupid. In fact I don't believe that he 'lost' all his stuff. There must be copies around the place, on other drives and stuff. He's just miffed that someone stole his drive and he'll have to load it all up again. Even for a non-tech, he deserves to go through this as he just wasn't thinking straight! Jerk. I know one guy who set his My Document folder to his removable drive. He carries that with him overseas etc etc. He's got no idea how dangerous that is and if he doesn't drop it, leave it, get it stolen or whatever, it'll crash anyway. Jerk. Mind you, I've warned him.
Ok then. Imagine you're at a party, and there are lots of girls there. Suddenly, you take out your sliderule! They all turn and gasp! You find yourself surrounded by a bevy of babes!
Meanwhile... the Football Jock takes out his HP-5000CU super-dooper groovy electronic calculator and they all ignore him! Because, everyone knows that you can miskey on a calculator, and as there are no keys on a sliderule, you win and get the girls!
Mine's a Faber Castell 1/54 - Logs, Sine Tan e^x, e^0.1x, e^0.01x, plus more. I even have the original instruction manual with it as well as the case. Probably about 35 years old.
1. Get a mirror, texta 2. Close one eyelid and draw an eye on it. 3. Close the other eyelid and draw an eye on it. 4. Go to Meeting 5. Close eyes 6. Sleep.
I think you're right. Even if MS put in an 'XP Mode' switch, it would make the current userbase a lot happier. Vista (for office work), just needs a tuneup.
The fundamental problem is that you don't know who your readership is, and the readership doesn't know you. I frankly hate reading any article, purportedly by a journalist, about anything more interesting than the mundane, as I just don't know who is writing it, whether he/she actually understands what they are reporting and generally I quickly click on a link to find out more from a more authoritative source. I don't envy your job for that reason. I suppose if you look at your work as bringing research to the attention of the cogniscenti, then you should feel a warm glow of acceptance. If, however you feel that your report should be taken more as an academic argument, then at least argue, or put an alternative across. For example: Recently it was reported that the floriensis humanoid discovered in Indonesia was another species of human rather than a diseased, affected human. The researchers concluded that it was another species. Nowhere in that article did the science writer argue otherwise, that the researchers would need to find/not find other samples of dwarf human species elsewhere. It was only when the story was taken up by another agency, where the writer interviewed others in the field, who discounted the claims and provided an alternative view. Now this happens all the time: An initial report followed by a more extensive account. I really can't see how you can get around that considering the time restraints you have as well as the access you have on the field of study. Good luck to you
Imagine a Beowulf Cluster running Excel 2007! I for one, welcome our Excel 2007 bug Overlords! Does it run Linux? In Russia Excel 2007 bugs YOU! umm.... Is that it?
Show me another company that develops an enormously popular product then continuously replaces it with major functional extensions and increasingly sexy devices in the face of almost no competition.
Geez... Now I'm answering a Troll! Look what/. has made me do! A similar thing has happened here in Australia. The Federal government had opened a tender to supply regional areas with high speed broadband. The 'monopoly holder' in Australia is Telstra, who own the landlines. The government has legislated that Telstra must lease their lines to competitors to provide some sort of competition, enabling 'free market' forces to operate in the telecom industry. This didn't work as planned since: A. Telstra still gets the leasing fee for lines that that own. B. Others can't be competitive because they have to pay Telstra.
So with the tender, instead of going with the cheaper option of landlines, they have selected a WiFi system instead from a Singapore company, forcing an alternative and attempting to break the monopoly that Telstra is. This is good. Detractors (ummm... read Telstra) are complaining that it is a 'duplication of services' and everybody agrees with that and most support the government's decision.
Now the EU (and the rest of the world) have a keen insight into MS whether they are right or wrong. Although it isn't a monopoly as there is competition, it is plainly obvious that they 'own' PCs. Their policy is to buy out startup companies, force proprietary software (Office) into institutions and so on. The think tank has a valid point since MS is not a self-regulating company being a behemoth that is stifling OS development. In a 'free market' you also have government intervention like trade policy, variation of taxes and duties which are effective. One way that the EU could try and make a difference is to tax PCs that contain MS as an operating system so every time you buy a PC with MS on it, you pay 10% more that goes (let's say) into a fund to support their competition. If MS were self regulatory, then they would do the same, or just provide the OS and allow others to provide the GUI.
What's the fuss about anyway? So Google buy Double-Click. What for? Isn't a piece of spyware anyway? At least Google is using it that way. I can't really see a difference between a company forcing targetted results onto unsuspecting netters.
Do you think that this will percolate through the old eastern block countries? Or the old Soviet (Russian Speaking) nations? Are you aware of how intrinsic the Russian educational system is across their borders? Would Georgia, Khazakstan etc and other Russian controlled states also be affected?
I for one, welcome our Soviet Linux Educators.....
Don't worry about internet banking... Now we're going to get a massive influx of Linux virii! And to make matters even more complicated it will be written in Russian!
I purchased a Dell for a customer a few days after Vista was launched in Australia (Jan 31st?). I specifically asked for XP, which they gave at the same price, but also gave an opportunity to download Vista Basic for around $47. Now that was interesting for me, as I would of been one of the first to demand XP. I also refused their offer of a widescreen 19" and went for a standard 19" instead.
By the way, Dell Sales still have no idea that their onboard sound chip drivers are crappy and buggy.
I dunno what MS is going to do, but the sales of XP stickered 2nd hand machines here are going to skyrocket, as those who want legal Windows OS that's NOT Vista are going to be hard pressed to find one after Jan 2008. Here, you can get a 2nd hand Lenovo/Dell/HP on auction sites for around $200 (Intel 2.4-3.4ghz) with XP productID stickers on them. That at least is worth $150+.
Thank you for your very lucid explanation, for which you deserve a reply.
Although I run an Ubuntu box, I haven't as yet found a good enough wysiwyg page editor that can encapsulate the variety of websites I maintain. Consequently as almost all of them are inherited (I didn't write them, I just alter them), it becomes a pain to edit a site created by Dreamweaver in Front Page - vice versa - or whatever. So I am almost forced in using the app to modify a page (or set thereof), save it, open up an ftp app, logon. Now the fun begins. I've got to check the timestamps (for logs) on the server, check the page timestamps, check to see if my page upload really uploaded by checking the timestamps, (as some ftp apps don't automatically refresh the local file list, it won't update the remote server as it thinks that the file date/timestamp is the same for both local and remote files) and then test the site. Any minor edit goes through the same process (often only minutes apart from the last upload) and as I'm working in 2 windows, one representing the files on my HD and the other representing the files on a remote server, ranking by newest to oldest would stir up the file list on one or the other and so I'll have to search file 'names' for comparison rather than leave the rank on file names alone and checking the date/time on the last uploaded version. Phew!
Now the ftp app will show timestamps anyway. But if I have to work with a GUI that doesn't do this (for convenience?), then it's just another minuscule hurdle. I can always get up a property sheet in Ubuntu for the file, but not listing a timestamp in a dir would be a pain.
So I suppose that what I'm waiting for is a good, quick page editor and a desktop that can handle timestamps. Mind you, I've not noticed that the Gnome desktop on my Ubuntu doesn't provide me with timestamps as all of the apps that I have run on it show it internally anyway.
Ummm... You need time stamps especially when you need to know which file is newest: eg ftping pages to a website that you've already loaded a few minutes ago cause you made a small edit on 3 pages and have to reload them etc etc etc. Timestamps - Good! No timestamps - BAD.
Don't forget that IBM have recently announced its own version called Lotus Symphony: http://symphony.lotus.com/software/lotus/symphony/home.jspa if your interested in the download for Linux and 32 bit windows. It's free and based on Star Office/Open Office and is ODF compliant. All you have to do is to register your organization with IBM and download it.
Slashdot Mirror
Read it again. It was much as I described. It was his personal stuff that he lost, but I grant you that the article wasn't very clear.
No need to call me an idiot though! That was not nice.....
What he probably done was to load up everything on a single drive and carry it around with him.
That's stupid for so many reasons, but a lot of people do it.
They set their removable drives with all their pics, video etc and carry it around with them, like a photo album, using it whenever and however they want.
Odds on, although it's a 'backup device' it's more probably a way of moving his data from point A to point B rather than a true backup.
But he's still an idiot. So is his daughter and son (who's so embarrassed that he changed his name... I'll give him that!)
Imagine getting your HD and carrying it around with you. Geez! Don't drop it!!!
That's just plain stupid. In fact I don't believe that he 'lost' all his stuff. There must be copies around the place, on other drives and stuff. He's just miffed that someone stole his drive and he'll have to load it all up again.
Even for a non-tech, he deserves to go through this as he just wasn't thinking straight!
Jerk.
I know one guy who set his My Document folder to his removable drive. He carries that with him overseas etc etc. He's got no idea how dangerous that is and if he doesn't drop it, leave it, get it stolen or whatever, it'll crash anyway.
Jerk.
Mind you, I've warned him.
Ok then. Imagine you're at a party, and there are lots of girls there.
Suddenly, you take out your sliderule!
They all turn and gasp!
You find yourself surrounded by a bevy of babes!
Meanwhile... the Football Jock takes out his HP-5000CU super-dooper groovy electronic calculator and they all ignore him!
Because, everyone knows that you can miskey on a calculator, and as there are no keys on a sliderule, you win and get the girls!
Get off my lawn you mongrels!
Oh for some mod points!
Mine's a Faber Castell 1/54 - Logs, Sine Tan e^x, e^0.1x, e^0.01x, plus more. I even have the original instruction manual with it as well as the case. Probably about 35 years old.
Now that's what I call an analogue computer!
1. Get a mirror, texta
2. Close one eyelid and draw an eye on it.
3. Close the other eyelid and draw an eye on it.
4. Go to Meeting
5. Close eyes
6. Sleep.
I think you're right. Even if MS put in an 'XP Mode' switch, it would make the current userbase a lot happier.
Vista (for office work), just needs a tuneup.
Hey does anyone know how I can dual boot ME and Vista?
All children of Abraham worship the same God.
The Koran is based on 4 books of the Hebrew Testament as told by Mohammad.
I'm just waiting for the Toshiba version to come out.
I'm sure it will be competitive....
The fundamental problem is that you don't know who your readership is, and the readership doesn't know you.
I frankly hate reading any article, purportedly by a journalist, about anything more interesting than the mundane, as I just don't know who is writing it, whether he/she actually understands what they are reporting and generally I quickly click on a link to find out more from a more authoritative source.
I don't envy your job for that reason.
I suppose if you look at your work as bringing research to the attention of the cogniscenti, then you should feel a warm glow of acceptance.
If, however you feel that your report should be taken more as an academic argument, then at least argue, or put an alternative across.
For example: Recently it was reported that the floriensis humanoid discovered in Indonesia was another species of human rather than a diseased, affected human.
The researchers concluded that it was another species. Nowhere in that article did the science writer argue otherwise, that the researchers would need to find/not find other samples of dwarf human species elsewhere.
It was only when the story was taken up by another agency, where the writer interviewed others in the field, who discounted the claims and provided an alternative view.
Now this happens all the time: An initial report followed by a more extensive account.
I really can't see how you can get around that considering the time restraints you have as well as the access you have on the field of study.
Good luck to you
Thank you for bringing some sense of reality to my /.ed brain.
I've been here for too long.....
That sounds like it's not a programming bug, but more of a logic bug instead.
Imagine a Beowulf Cluster running Excel 2007!
I for one, welcome our Excel 2007 bug Overlords!
Does it run Linux?
In Russia Excel 2007 bugs YOU!
umm.... Is that it?
Show me another company that develops an enormously popular product then continuously replaces it with major functional extensions and increasingly sexy devices in the face of almost no competition.
Microsoft?I like David Letterman's 'Interweb' lol
A term that describes everything pretty much accurately.
Windows Live Mail does it too.
Geez... Now I'm answering a Troll! Look what /. has made me do!
A similar thing has happened here in Australia. The Federal government had opened a tender to supply regional areas with high speed broadband. The 'monopoly holder' in Australia is Telstra, who own the landlines. The government has legislated that Telstra must lease their lines to competitors to provide some sort of competition, enabling 'free market' forces to operate in the telecom industry. This didn't work as planned since:
A. Telstra still gets the leasing fee for lines that that own.
B. Others can't be competitive because they have to pay Telstra.
So with the tender, instead of going with the cheaper option of landlines, they have selected a WiFi system instead from a Singapore company, forcing an alternative and attempting to break the monopoly that Telstra is.
This is good.
Detractors (ummm... read Telstra) are complaining that it is a 'duplication of services' and everybody agrees with that and most support the government's decision.
Now the EU (and the rest of the world) have a keen insight into MS whether they are right or wrong. Although it isn't a monopoly as there is competition, it is plainly obvious that they 'own' PCs. Their policy is to buy out startup companies, force proprietary software (Office) into institutions and so on.
The think tank has a valid point since MS is not a self-regulating company being a behemoth that is stifling OS development.
In a 'free market' you also have government intervention like trade policy, variation of taxes and duties which are effective.
One way that the EU could try and make a difference is to tax PCs that contain MS as an operating system so every time you buy a PC with MS on it, you pay 10% more that goes (let's say) into a fund to support their competition.
If MS were self regulatory, then they would do the same, or just provide the OS and allow others to provide the GUI.
What's the fuss about anyway?
So Google buy Double-Click. What for?
Isn't a piece of spyware anyway? At least Google is using it that way. I can't really see a difference between a company forcing targetted results onto unsuspecting netters.
Just my rant. Sorry.
Do you think that this will percolate through the old eastern block countries? Or the old Soviet (Russian Speaking) nations?
Are you aware of how intrinsic the Russian educational system is across their borders? Would Georgia, Khazakstan etc and other Russian controlled states also be affected?
Thanks
I for one, welcome our Soviet Linux Educators.....
Don't worry about internet banking... Now we're going to get a massive influx of Linux virii!
And to make matters even more complicated it will be written in Russian!
Tovarich!
I purchased a Dell for a customer a few days after Vista was launched in Australia (Jan 31st?).
I specifically asked for XP, which they gave at the same price, but also gave an opportunity to download Vista Basic for around $47.
Now that was interesting for me, as I would of been one of the first to demand XP.
I also refused their offer of a widescreen 19" and went for a standard 19" instead.
By the way, Dell Sales still have no idea that their onboard sound chip drivers are crappy and buggy.
I dunno what MS is going to do, but the sales of XP stickered 2nd hand machines here are going to skyrocket, as those who want legal Windows OS that's NOT Vista are going to be hard pressed to find one after Jan 2008.
Here, you can get a 2nd hand Lenovo/Dell/HP on auction sites for around $200 (Intel 2.4-3.4ghz) with XP productID stickers on them. That at least is worth $150+.
Thank you for your very lucid explanation, for which you deserve a reply.
Although I run an Ubuntu box, I haven't as yet found a good enough wysiwyg page editor that can encapsulate the variety of websites I maintain. Consequently as almost all of them are inherited (I didn't write them, I just alter them), it becomes a pain to edit a site created by Dreamweaver in Front Page - vice versa - or whatever.
So I am almost forced in using the app to modify a page (or set thereof), save it, open up an ftp app, logon. Now the fun begins. I've got to check the timestamps (for logs) on the server, check the page timestamps, check to see if my page upload really uploaded by checking the timestamps, (as some ftp apps don't automatically refresh the local file list, it won't update the remote server as it thinks that the file date/timestamp is the same for both local and remote files) and then test the site. Any minor edit goes through the same process (often only minutes apart from the last upload) and as I'm working in 2 windows, one representing the files on my HD and the other representing the files on a remote server, ranking by newest to oldest would stir up the file list on one or the other and so I'll have to search file 'names' for comparison rather than leave the rank on file names alone and checking the date/time on the last uploaded version. Phew!
Now the ftp app will show timestamps anyway. But if I have to work with a GUI that doesn't do this (for convenience?), then it's just another minuscule hurdle. I can always get up a property sheet in Ubuntu for the file, but not listing a timestamp in a dir would be a pain.
So I suppose that what I'm waiting for is a good, quick page editor and a desktop that can handle timestamps.
Mind you, I've not noticed that the Gnome desktop on my Ubuntu doesn't provide me with timestamps as all of the apps that I have run on it show it internally anyway.
Ummm... You need time stamps especially when you need to know which file is newest: eg ftping pages to a website that you've already loaded a few minutes ago cause you made a small edit on 3 pages and have to reload them etc etc etc.
Timestamps - Good!
No timestamps - BAD.
Don't forget that IBM have recently announced its own version called Lotus Symphony:
http://symphony.lotus.com/software/lotus/symphony/home.jspa if your interested in the download for Linux and 32 bit windows.
It's free and based on Star Office/Open Office and is ODF compliant.
All you have to do is to register your organization with IBM and download it.
I wonder if they distribute CD versions?