It is, as well, one of the very few ways men can successfully accessorize; gaudy earrings, bracelets, piercings, and the like are not professional, nor are they attractive outside a minority group.
To a 59 year old geezer like me, all that shit is just, well, a bit too effeminate, you know? Did you know that originally a man wearing an earring in one ear signified you'd been in prison, the other ear meant you were homosexual? What's next, men wearing nail polish, lipstick, and dresses? LMAO@U sissies!
Now get me a goddamned beer or get off my lawn, pussy!
Pshaw, when I was i high school I had a Timex that not only didn't need batteries, you didn't have to wind it. Natural movement of the arm sent a weight inside spinning.
When are electronic analog computers making a comeback? Noise, but no rounding errors.
This is hilarious to those of us who grew up when everything was analog. Having both a wristwatch and a cell phone is a little... don''t know how to put this...
...dumb? Redundant? Redumbdunce?
LMAO at the kids! Now if they really got retro and started using slide rules I'd be impressed.
That said (*blush*) I have an analog clock on my wall. Just saw an article on CNN today that said cassettes are making a comeback -- that's even funnier!
What I do is buy the hardware I want, then download a dozen distros and try them out. Some with work with your hardware, some won't. Then pick the one you like best from the ones that work. But if you're happy with Windows (I wasn't because of, ironically, driver issues in a machine several years ago among other things) there's little reason to switch; your computer came with Windows.
If Windows craps out and the hardware mfg doesn't supply a reinstall disk, you then have a choice -- spend over a hundred bucks buying Windows again, or download a dozen Linux distros.
No, with Linux when you power down, not just hibernate, everything comes back when you power back up. The Acer booted so fast that I never saw any reason to put it in hibernate in Linux, but I used hibernate in Windows just to keep from having to reopen everything.
Oh, I misunderstood your comment. I thought you were talking about heating your home with electricity when you were talking about the heat that comes from the computer. My bad.
you cannot honestly tell me that Linux hardware support approaches that of Windows
That used to be true, and may be (and probably still is) for brand-new bleeding edge hardware. I wouldn't install Linux on a hardcore game machine, but why would one?
However, I haven't had any driver issued in Linux for years. The Acer Aspire One I bought last year worked flawlessly under kubuntu (it came with Win 7 preinstalled). No problems with its wifi at all, and kubuntu's wifi gave you a lot more info about the connection than Win did.
Even a tiny $20 bluetooth dongle I bought to move pictures from my phone to the computer worked flawlessly, and I didn't even have to install any software or drivers. It actually surprised me; there was an install CD for Windows and Mac and I didn't think it was going to work under Linux at all. It wouldn't work under Windows until I installed its drivers. Worked out of the box under kubuntu without installing anything; just plug the dongle in and it worked.
I've never played the geocache game, but wouldn't you register the coordinates after you've planted the cache? In TFA a shopkeeper saw someone "suspiciously" put something somewhere and called the cops. Would the coordinates already have been listed?
You're absolutely right. If you like Windows, you should run Windows. My problem with Windows is it's their way or no way, which goes against my grain. I also dislike the fact that they're sure I'm a pirate, and I find that offensive.
That's one of the advantages of Linux -- you only have to reboot if you're making a change to the kernel. One of my favorite other advantages of Linux (and many disagree with me on this and absolutely hate it) is that when you turn the machine on, every program and data file that was open when you shut it down is still open.
He's comparing GIMP (free, $0) to an application that costs $1,000. The better comparison would be to MS Paint; GIMP is clearly superior to that.
Likewise with Blender and the other programs he's touting -- there is no comparale, affordable app on Windows unless you pirate them, and if you do you're probably going to be installing a ton of viruses.
Likewise the media player. I like XMMS, but every Linux media player I've ever seen is head and shoulders above WiMP (Windows Media Player). WiMP is a trojan vector unless they've changed it (which they may have) -- WMA files' DRM capabilitie make it easy to trojan someone's box. You can insert your trojan into a WMA file (which iinm WMA files aren't supported under Linux), rename it with an MP3 extension, and WiMP will play the file and its trojan payload happily. No other media player I know (on any platform) will play a WMA file that's had the extension changed to MP3.
I was a two-striper in the USAF when the Altair came out, so I never could afford the $400. That was a lot of money back then! I think it was about four months pay for me. I had to make do with a slide rule =(
If you're in a cold climate you'd be a fool to use electricity to heat. Somewhere like North Florida where it seldom gets cold and almost never freezes, a heat pump is a good choice. But anywhere that it gets very far below freezing the heat pump doesn't heat well, and resistive heating is incredibly expensive compared to oil or gas.
I don't know why I still consider this a technical forum. Almost everything you said isn't true. Windows 7 installs from a USB stick in about 15 minutes
The last version of Windows I installed was XP, six or seven years ago. I only have my own experience to judge by. I had win7 preinstalled on an Acer Aspire, and it was a whole lot better than XP was in a lot of ways. The only two issues I had with it I blame Acer for, not Microsoft. One was their annoying "tap to click" feature, I had a hard time figuring out how to shut that off in Windows. The other was if you had it set to hibernate when you shut the lid under power, but shut off under battery, and shut the lid and plug it in Windows went crazy -- but so did Linux. I can't blame an OS on hardware problems. Although kubuntu was far more fault-tolerant than Windows with that issue; just take the battery out, put it back in and turn it on. With Windows it ran chkdsk (wise IMO) and rebooted at least once before it was stable again. I'm not sure, but I think Linux does at least some error checking on boot, since I have a drive on my "cobbled together from spare parts" machine that's going bad, and Linux warns me about it (unnecessarily, since I know that a drive that goes "chongchongcnong" sometimes is going bad).
Windows starts and then some configuration questions are asked and I assume are required on other platforms (account name and password, date and time, and yes, choosing to enter the Windows license key or not).
It sounds like Win 7 is closer to a Linux install than it is to a Win XP install, which IMO is a good thing. You never had the choice of whether or not to put the key in with XP; it was mandatory. In Linux you don't have to enter the date or time, just what time zone you're in. It gets the date and time from an online time server.
That doesn't make Windows a less viable platform or me ignorant on the available options.
That's true.
And I prefer to install only the programs I want to use. I hear of people who have issues with not keeping everything patched or turning off unwanted services.
Yes, you have the choice of what to install in most distros. The turning off unwanted services, at least in distros I've tried, is indeed FUD; usually it's the other way around. It will ask you what services you want turned on and will turn them on for you. I'm not sure about win 7 (never installed 7) but Windows has historically had everything on by default. I would imagine they've changed that by now; I hope so, anyway.
It's not that it's hard, just that it's a pain in the ass, although I've been informed that 7 is close to as easy as a Linux install these days. In every Linux distro you have one screen of choices and walk away, take out the CD and reboot. With Windows (at least until XP, it was the last Windows install I did) you have to sit at the monitor and click something every three minutes for an hour, and reboot a dozen times.Again, it wasn't hard, just an annoying pain in the ass.
You say "quit bashing" and then talk about "programs that are actually useful(and not the shitty ones that are packaged with it)." What's shitty about Open Office? Pot and kettle, sir.
My opinion is that the only Microsoft program I've ever used that wasn't shitty was Excel; IMO it's the best spreadsheet out there (I have Excel, Quattro, and Lotus on my machine at work, and I hate them all, but I hate Excel the least. It's actually a well designed program). I absolutely HATE what Microsoft did to FoxPro; it was a damned good program before version 8, but they hadn't changed it much after buying it from its previous developers until then.
A quick search for windows and apple software is easy. Doing the same requires a knowledgeable person on had at all times
One word - kpackage. Windows would be a LOT better if it had something similar (I understand Apple does).
I think perhaps realityimpaired is comparitively young. I get the impression from what you said about your experience with installing OSes that you're at least middle aged. These kids don't realize how much a PITA their printed material and web pages are for someone just a few years older than them. What idiotic nineteen year old at Google decided that gray on black links was a good idea???
Glad I got that eye implant, I see better than the youngsters do now. I probably wouldn't have the trouble with the key I had last time I installed Windows.
Windows 7 comes with an office suite, games, etc? Most folks wouldn't have to install anything with Linux that didn't come with it.
I call bullshit on the drivers and wifi. Maybe your hardware had issues, but I bought an Acer Aspire One last year and the first thing I did was install kubuntu dual-boot. The hardest part was getting it on a thumb drive and making the thumb drive bootable, but everything worked -- drivers, wifi, everything. I didn't have to configure anything at all, except the mouse; the Acer had an annoying "feature" called "tap to click". In kubuntu it was three clicks away to disable it, took a month to figure out how to do it in Windows 7 (eight or ten clicks iirc).
I had to download and install FireFox because I hate konqueror.
One last thing: I've only had a couple of systems not have all or most of its drivers already in Windows, and those that have a couple missing usually can find it in Windows Update.
I had the exact opposite experience six or seven years ago. I'd been running Windows 98 when my daughter, never believing that a big corporation would root her dad's computer, installed XCP from a Sony-BMG music CD she'd bought at the record store she worked at.
I couldn't find the video or audio driver disks when I reformatted the drive and reinstalled 98, so I went to the internet to download them, and all that were available were for XP. No win 98 drivers.
I'd had Mandriva dual-boot, but had bought a new video card sith S-Video out so I could play games on the TV (console, schmonsole) but the s-video wouldn't work in Mandriva or Suse, but worked in 98. So I bought a copy of XP. None of the sound drivers would work so I bought a USB Sound Blaster. I hadn't booted into Linux for a long time, so didn't bother reinstalling it.
Anyway, I installed the software that came with my CD burner, and on the reboot XP informed me that it made systems unstable (even though I'd never had any stability problems with 98) and it was disabling it -- and wouldn't let me uninstall it. And it gave me that same message on every boot. By then I was tired of installing crap, so I shut it down and went to the bar.
The next morning the cablemodem was on the floor and it wouldn't connect to the internet. I figured tha cat had knocked it off and broken it, so I called the cable company. The modem was fine, they said, because they could see the modem, but not the computer, and suggested my network card had gone out. I tried another cable and it still wouldn't work, so I figured I'd reinstall Windows and spend another ten bucks on a network card.
When I reinstalled Windows I had internet access again -- Windows Update had replaced my perfectly good driver with one that didn't work at all!
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It is, as well, one of the very few ways men can successfully accessorize; gaudy earrings, bracelets, piercings, and the like are not professional, nor are they attractive outside a minority group.
To a 59 year old geezer like me, all that shit is just, well, a bit too effeminate, you know? Did you know that originally a man wearing an earring in one ear signified you'd been in prison, the other ear meant you were homosexual? What's next, men wearing nail polish, lipstick, and dresses? LMAO@U sissies!
Now get me a goddamned beer or get off my lawn, pussy!
True; all sound is analog. All audio amplifiers are analog. I can see the kids now, "dude, I've got analog speakers!"
Pshaw, when I was i high school I had a Timex that not only didn't need batteries, you didn't have to wind it. Natural movement of the arm sent a weight inside spinning.
When are electronic analog computers making a comeback? Noise, but no rounding errors.
How quaint.
This is hilarious to those of us who grew up when everything was analog. Having both a wristwatch and a cell phone is a little... don''t know how to put this...
LMAO at the kids! Now if they really got retro and started using slide rules I'd be impressed.
That said (*blush*) I have an analog clock on my wall. Just saw an article on CNN today that said cassettes are making a comeback -- that's even funnier!
What's next, black and white CRTs?
What I do is buy the hardware I want, then download a dozen distros and try them out. Some with work with your hardware, some won't. Then pick the one you like best from the ones that work. But if you're happy with Windows (I wasn't because of, ironically, driver issues in a machine several years ago among other things) there's little reason to switch; your computer came with Windows.
If Windows craps out and the hardware mfg doesn't supply a reinstall disk, you then have a choice -- spend over a hundred bucks buying Windows again, or download a dozen Linux distros.
No, with Linux when you power down, not just hibernate, everything comes back when you power back up. The Acer booted so fast that I never saw any reason to put it in hibernate in Linux, but I used hibernate in Windows just to keep from having to reopen everything.
Oh, I misunderstood your comment. I thought you were talking about heating your home with electricity when you were talking about the heat that comes from the computer. My bad.
It was true for XP, which was the last version of Windows I installed. Really only one release ago, if you discount Vista.
Love that Star Trek Spock quote! ;)
you cannot honestly tell me that Linux hardware support approaches that of Windows
That used to be true, and may be (and probably still is) for brand-new bleeding edge hardware. I wouldn't install Linux on a hardcore game machine, but why would one?
However, I haven't had any driver issued in Linux for years. The Acer Aspire One I bought last year worked flawlessly under kubuntu (it came with Win 7 preinstalled). No problems with its wifi at all, and kubuntu's wifi gave you a lot more info about the connection than Win did.
Even a tiny $20 bluetooth dongle I bought to move pictures from my phone to the computer worked flawlessly, and I didn't even have to install any software or drivers. It actually surprised me; there was an install CD for Windows and Mac and I didn't think it was going to work under Linux at all. It wouldn't work under Windows until I installed its drivers. Worked out of the box under kubuntu without installing anything; just plug the dongle in and it worked.
But from then on, it's a LOT harder to do anything
That puzzles me. I don't find anything about it to be hard.
I've never played the geocache game, but wouldn't you register the coordinates after you've planted the cache? In TFA a shopkeeper saw someone "suspiciously" put something somewhere and called the cops. Would the coordinates already have been listed?
You're absolutely right. If you like Windows, you should run Windows. My problem with Windows is it's their way or no way, which goes against my grain. I also dislike the fact that they're sure I'm a pirate, and I find that offensive.
Per journey, yes. Not per passenger mile, which affects you as a passenger (counting a driver as a passenger).
And yes, it doesn't get much more dangerous than a motorcycle.
By "hard" I meant "lots of work". Neither Linux nor Windows installs take much gray matter to perform. You are correct; I meant tedious.
That's one of the advantages of Linux -- you only have to reboot if you're making a change to the kernel. One of my favorite other advantages of Linux (and many disagree with me on this and absolutely hate it) is that when you turn the machine on, every program and data file that was open when you shut it down is still open.
I think you just bit an AC troll ;)
He's comparing GIMP (free, $0) to an application that costs $1,000. The better comparison would be to MS Paint; GIMP is clearly superior to that.
Likewise with Blender and the other programs he's touting -- there is no comparale, affordable app on Windows unless you pirate them, and if you do you're probably going to be installing a ton of viruses.
Likewise the media player. I like XMMS, but every Linux media player I've ever seen is head and shoulders above WiMP (Windows Media Player). WiMP is a trojan vector unless they've changed it (which they may have) -- WMA files' DRM capabilitie make it easy to trojan someone's box. You can insert your trojan into a WMA file (which iinm WMA files aren't supported under Linux), rename it with an MP3 extension, and WiMP will play the file and its trojan payload happily. No other media player I know (on any platform) will play a WMA file that's had the extension changed to MP3.
DNFTT!
I was a two-striper in the USAF when the Altair came out, so I never could afford the $400. That was a lot of money back then! I think it was about four months pay for me. I had to make do with a slide rule =(
If you're in a cold climate you'd be a fool to use electricity to heat. Somewhere like North Florida where it seldom gets cold and almost never freezes, a heat pump is a good choice. But anywhere that it gets very far below freezing the heat pump doesn't heat well, and resistive heating is incredibly expensive compared to oil or gas.
I don't know why I still consider this a technical forum. Almost everything you said isn't true. Windows 7 installs from a USB stick in about 15 minutes
The last version of Windows I installed was XP, six or seven years ago. I only have my own experience to judge by. I had win7 preinstalled on an Acer Aspire, and it was a whole lot better than XP was in a lot of ways. The only two issues I had with it I blame Acer for, not Microsoft. One was their annoying "tap to click" feature, I had a hard time figuring out how to shut that off in Windows. The other was if you had it set to hibernate when you shut the lid under power, but shut off under battery, and shut the lid and plug it in Windows went crazy -- but so did Linux. I can't blame an OS on hardware problems. Although kubuntu was far more fault-tolerant than Windows with that issue; just take the battery out, put it back in and turn it on. With Windows it ran chkdsk (wise IMO) and rebooted at least once before it was stable again. I'm not sure, but I think Linux does at least some error checking on boot, since I have a drive on my "cobbled together from spare parts" machine that's going bad, and Linux warns me about it (unnecessarily, since I know that a drive that goes "chongchongcnong" sometimes is going bad).
Windows starts and then some configuration questions are asked and I assume are required on other platforms (account name and password, date and time, and yes, choosing to enter the Windows license key or not).
It sounds like Win 7 is closer to a Linux install than it is to a Win XP install, which IMO is a good thing. You never had the choice of whether or not to put the key in with XP; it was mandatory. In Linux you don't have to enter the date or time, just what time zone you're in. It gets the date and time from an online time server.
That doesn't make Windows a less viable platform or me ignorant on the available options.
That's true.
And I prefer to install only the programs I want to use. I hear of people who have issues with not keeping everything patched or turning off unwanted services.
Yes, you have the choice of what to install in most distros. The turning off unwanted services, at least in distros I've tried, is indeed FUD; usually it's the other way around. It will ask you what services you want turned on and will turn them on for you. I'm not sure about win 7 (never installed 7) but Windows has historically had everything on by default. I would imagine they've changed that by now; I hope so, anyway.
It's not that it's hard, just that it's a pain in the ass, although I've been informed that 7 is close to as easy as a Linux install these days. In every Linux distro you have one screen of choices and walk away, take out the CD and reboot. With Windows (at least until XP, it was the last Windows install I did) you have to sit at the monitor and click something every three minutes for an hour, and reboot a dozen times.Again, it wasn't hard, just an annoying pain in the ass.
You say "quit bashing" and then talk about "programs that are actually useful(and not the shitty ones that are packaged with it)." What's shitty about Open Office? Pot and kettle, sir.
My opinion is that the only Microsoft program I've ever used that wasn't shitty was Excel; IMO it's the best spreadsheet out there (I have Excel, Quattro, and Lotus on my machine at work, and I hate them all, but I hate Excel the least. It's actually a well designed program). I absolutely HATE what Microsoft did to FoxPro; it was a damned good program before version 8, but they hadn't changed it much after buying it from its previous developers until then.
A quick search for windows and apple software is easy. Doing the same requires a knowledgeable person on had at all times
One word - kpackage. Windows would be a LOT better if it had something similar (I understand Apple does).
I think perhaps realityimpaired is comparitively young. I get the impression from what you said about your experience with installing OSes that you're at least middle aged. These kids don't realize how much a PITA their printed material and web pages are for someone just a few years older than them. What idiotic nineteen year old at Google decided that gray on black links was a good idea???
Glad I got that eye implant, I see better than the youngsters do now. I probably wouldn't have the trouble with the key I had last time I installed Windows.
Windows 7 comes with an office suite, games, etc? Most folks wouldn't have to install anything with Linux that didn't come with it.
I call bullshit on the drivers and wifi. Maybe your hardware had issues, but I bought an Acer Aspire One last year and the first thing I did was install kubuntu dual-boot. The hardest part was getting it on a thumb drive and making the thumb drive bootable, but everything worked -- drivers, wifi, everything. I didn't have to configure anything at all, except the mouse; the Acer had an annoying "feature" called "tap to click". In kubuntu it was three clicks away to disable it, took a month to figure out how to do it in Windows 7 (eight or ten clicks iirc).
I had to download and install FireFox because I hate konqueror.
The last Windows distro I installed was XP. Does 7 still have that annoying 40 character code?
The easiest OS install I've seen was DOS,
FDISK
Format c:
copy a: *.* \c -[forgot what the switch was to make it bootable, it's been a long time]
It csounds like you've installed more OSes than I have :)
One last thing: I've only had a couple of systems not have all or most of its drivers already in Windows, and those that have a couple missing usually can find it in Windows Update.
I had the exact opposite experience six or seven years ago. I'd been running Windows 98 when my daughter, never believing that a big corporation would root her dad's computer, installed XCP from a Sony-BMG music CD she'd bought at the record store she worked at.
I couldn't find the video or audio driver disks when I reformatted the drive and reinstalled 98, so I went to the internet to download them, and all that were available were for XP. No win 98 drivers.
I'd had Mandriva dual-boot, but had bought a new video card sith S-Video out so I could play games on the TV (console, schmonsole) but the s-video wouldn't work in Mandriva or Suse, but worked in 98. So I bought a copy of XP. None of the sound drivers would work so I bought a USB Sound Blaster. I hadn't booted into Linux for a long time, so didn't bother reinstalling it.
Anyway, I installed the software that came with my CD burner, and on the reboot XP informed me that it made systems unstable (even though I'd never had any stability problems with 98) and it was disabling it -- and wouldn't let me uninstall it. And it gave me that same message on every boot. By then I was tired of installing crap, so I shut it down and went to the bar.
The next morning the cablemodem was on the floor and it wouldn't connect to the internet. I figured tha cat had knocked it off and broken it, so I called the cable company. The modem was fine, they said, because they could see the modem, but not the computer, and suggested my network card had gone out. I tried another cable and it still wouldn't work, so I figured I'd reinstall Windows and spend another ten bucks on a network card.
When I reinstalled Windows I had internet access again -- Windows Update had replaced my perfectly good driver with one that didn't work at all!