I have a rather vivid image of myself entering root passwords to get administrative things done in my 95ish computer... Maybe the home PCs magically became more powerful when you used another OS?
OK, first, contrary to popular belief, we do not have a shortage of landfills in the USA. In fact, quite the opposite. We have a SHITLOAD of land that we'd like to make into landfill, but WE DON'T HAVE ENOUGH TRASH. Just our EXISTING landfills will last us more than 200 years...
Or... we could use the land for other things...
next, no landfil in the history of the USA has ever leaked a hazardous chemical that has entered a water supply. If you look into how these things are made, you'll see why.
Hmmm... Staten Island and Long Island anyone? In S.I. it's local waterways. On Long Island, it's DRINKING water that gets affected in the not-so-deep wells that feed western LI's drinking water supply.
I'm sure there are other affected areas as well... those are just the ones I know of because... ummm... I live here and get to read about the problems.
Next, grocery bags contain cornstarch aditives, and break down nearly 100 times faster than their paper equivolents in landfills.
Actually, a paper bag will dissolve quite nicely into ground/plant nutrients with just some moisture - and still quicker than a plastic bag - even though they have done wonders in that area. But even so, plastic bags exposed to light and the elements dissolve decently fast - but when you bury one, well, not as fast.
Paper bags require more energy to make, cause more environmental damage to make (all those deisel engines cutting down forests and hauling away trees), take more warehouse space, more landfil space, and actually take LONGER to biodegrade.
All but the "longer to biodegrade" part. Again, NOT longer (to deteriorate), and I dont think you understand the meaning of the word "biodegrade" - it's paper - what is there to biodegrade?
And it gets faster if [...] you watch your hands move by at close to the speed of light. Way cool.
Ah, but the speed of light is absolute no matter what the reference point is, so technically, it'd be the same speed, whether you or the hand was moving.
Ah, but the speed of light is NOT constant, and I am baffled by the fact that people still think it is.
Heck, just recently, a bunch of scientists (Google it yourself) figured out how to stop a photon.
But that aside, I believe you are discussing "the speed of light in a vacuum" - which is at best, still a theoretical extrapolation (unless you can tell me of some location we have measured it that is indeed a true vacuum) and (presumed to be) in an area where the light will not interact with other energy forms such as gravity (to name just one).
And of course, there are still some doubts as to how the measurement devices and technology used to make such "speed estimates" affects the results.
And not back to the point you were referencing in the post you replied to - that's based on the theories of a man who, according to various scientists of the day, had an inadequate understanding of (the speed of) light, relativity and quantum physics... which brings up many problems in anything based off such theories - the most layman problem being a photon has mass (even at rest) - even if infinitesimal. So... when that photon is travelling at the speed of light (which they seem to do quite often), that photon has infinite mass. Interesting. We're talking solar-system wide destruction whenever someone turns on their headlights on their car... I'd shudder to think of the destruction level if say... the sun... started emitting photons at the speed of light.
But then again, photons only theoretically have mass....
Thus, what you probably meant to say is that:
"Based off our current perceptions of reality, and assuming reality tends to agree with those perceptions (even if not universally held perceptions at that), it would theoretically (not technically) be the same speed, whether your hand was moving or not".
Sorry, I'm bored, and this was mostly intended to be a humorous reminder that theories (regardless of how widely used or believed) are still just theories - and like the world being flat and nothing ever being able to exceed the speed of sound - often proven wrong at some later date.
Moderators: I'm going for a +.5 Funny/+.5 Insightful - or a -1 Annoying. Take your pick.
Indeed. While the state of Windows security is far from perfect, Windows machines "just sitting around" aren't ticking time bombs (assuming, as the poster did, that it remains patched to most current levels, etc) any more than OS X, et al.
Sorry... I coulda sworn I still saw updates and hotfixes that dealt with buffer overflows and underflows and similar issues which wouldnt take much more than finding a Windows machine and exploiting that hole. And I coulda sworn that as many times as people think MS has corrected all such issues, someone finds a similar new exploit shortly after the earlier ones are "corrected"
Gotta remember, many people dont have a real firewall (heck, many people think that silly little button in XP to "enable firewall" actually IS a (real) firewall). And of course, a decent number of people still dont have ISPs that block the dangerous Windows ports that other ISPs block...
Under OS/2, any app can take advantage of multicore or SMP without having been written for it. Since the core of the OS was designed for 1-64 CPUs, whenever the app calls the OS to do something, it can (and does) spawn tasks/threads across multiple CPUs.
Every modern OS spreads threads across CPUs. This may have been cool when OS/2 was new, but it's old hat now.
Most apps are single-threaded. There's nothing the OS can do about that. There is ongoing work to compile apps written with one thread in mind to (safely) take advantage of multiple processors, but that work has been ongoing for 20+ years without a lot of traction.
(By "thread" I really mean "execution context" - people wrote code that took advantage of multiple processors for decades before the simplifying idea of "threads" was popularized - but still most apps don't do asynchronous I/O either.)
Well, actually, I think you misunderstand my point. The core OS (OS/2) is highly threaded. Even things like running a DOS or Win31 session under OS/2 gets handled by more than one thread which the OS can automatically spawn across CPUs. Windows does not do that for monolithic apps. Under Windows, the app must be written to take advantage of more than one CPU. Under OS/2, it will automatically spawn new threads on different CPUs, or service calls made to the OS over multiple CPUs - all without the program ever knowing (or being written to do so).
The other big differences are in CPU utilization (OS/2 scales more efficiently on more CPUs still to this day), Windows still doesnt have very useful 64 core (or 64 CPU) support - while OS/2 has had it for years (over a decade). Another difference is that native OS/2 apps are supposed to be (but aren't always) at least 2 threads... the GUI/UI related thread, and the processing thread (or threads), meaning every OS/2 app should, out of the box, be able to take advantage of more than one CPU. Heck, the GUI alone often spawns more threads than all of Windows creates.
On certain monolithic apps, the gain isn't anything too impressive - but it is there and is noticeable. On apps like Firefox and OOo, the gain is quite very noticeable - even with them not designed for multicore out of the box.
So... no, it wasn't just cool then... it still is to this day, and is an area where Windows is lacking.
Taking advantage of multiple processors is something the application needs to do: the OS has been doing all it can since 2000. No reason for an OS upgrade in this case, though app upgrades might be nice.
Not exactly true. That is the case with Windows and a variety of other OS's, but not with all other OS's.
Under OS/2, any app can take advantage of multicore or SMP without having been written for it. Since the core of the OS was designed for 1-64 CPUs, whenever the app calls the OS to do something, it can (and does) spawn tasks/threads across multiple CPUs. And, for the rare app that cannot run using SMP, it has a tool to mark the exe to only use one CPU.
Apps using entirely their own libraries probably wouldn't benefit (but then again, I doubt those apps could even really exist since some service they use has to be handled by the OS - such as disk or screen or user IO).
The difference is OS/2 is highly threaded and designed for it... the Windows line was not designed in such fashion, leaving multicore benefits to (only) those apps that actually support it.
But your base point is indeed quite correct. SMP and multicore have been around for well over a decade in the Windows and OS/2 world... as you stated and/or inferred, that was no reason for Vista, since the support already existed (since before XP, and Win2K for that matter).
XP will be available for OEMs until June 30, 2010, or one year after the availability of the next client version of Windows, whichever date comes later.
Meaning... 2013 or 2014? Just an (un)educated guess based off what their previous initial "planned release dates" translate into on the real world calendar.
...one day I would love to see what sort of calendar MS uses for when they first announce a planned release date...
Ideally I would run the scan by unplugging the network cable and booting from directly the malware-scanner CD. Unfortunately nobody makes such a thing
Which is why every computer shop, or company worried about security, or technician, should make their own.
It's pretty easy actually - through about a dozen methods, including *nix or eComStation live boot disks with ClamAV, et al installed, or using BartPE and building the tools into the ISO, or using Hirens and doing the same, or... well, you get the point... the list of choices are plenty.
And with a rewritable, it is pretty easy to update the disk every day by dragging the updated definitions/apps into the correct directory (or with the tiny cost of CDs, burn a new one every day - or with a good selection of NIC drivers on a Bart disk, let the programs auto update the definitions through the Internet before it even touches the machine's hard drives).
I agree it would be kinda nice if a company made such a product - but what company out there does a good job at dealing with all the threats possible on a PC? You'd still need multiple solutions... the only one I know of that comes close is Spyware Terminator since you can enable ClamAV support. But even so, I prefer the "multiple solutions to each issue" method, namely because even with every program updated, while there is a high level of overlap (eg: they all agree on/find 99% of the viruses and spyware and trojans on a computer; each finds just a few more that the other programs in their category dont). As a neat example, one machine that the customer insisted we could not wipe and needed to clean (5 digit list of infections) required 6 different software packages to find them all... oddly there were two viruses that everything but an outdated McAfee found (we checked, they definitely were infected)... yet ClamAV and 3 other packages missed it. On the other hand, we clean one of our customer's systems with ClamAV to grab everything that Norton and McAfee miss.
So, I prefer the "roll your own" approach:-) And I am guessing that anyone who needs to do true scans/cleaning of their systems also use multiple tools if such issues are critical to them.
I know they're clean because I keep them clean on a day-to-day basis by not installing tons of random crap I found in the net.toilet, keeping applications and plug-ins (and pointless upgrades!) to a bare minimum, and keeping an eye on the security bulletins. It's not rocket science, but it is kind of computer science.
Sadly, as anyone who does this day in and day out can tell you, that is not enough to ensure a system is clean. Windows (any version, any service pack) does not need any user intervention or use to get infected. I'm not saying it is horrendous (nor am I saying it's not - not making any statement either way)... what I am saying is that machines do get infected even with all updates installed - and no user in front of the keyboard.
The patent probably in question is related to the "S506" interface... it exists, many drivers in certain OSs are named after it, like IBM's IBM1S506, others' DaniS506, etc.
The problem will be them proving the patent excludes a storage mechanism communicating with a computer (especially via different interfaces like SATA), since IBM holds quite a number of quite earlier (1950's) patents on such things - and I kind of doubt the steps neccessary (and outlined) in Seagate's patent are even implementable on a SSD drive... head movement? actuator arms? spindle and stepper motor controllers? There really isn't much left once you take out the hard disk portion (platters, spindle, actuator arm, r/w heads) and have replaced the IDE interface with something else.
So my guess is it is NOT valid - for if any part of the patent's claims ARE valid, then IBM's patents related to the original tech would be even more valid and supercede any such claims on Seagate's part (unless their patent should not have been granted with those portions in at all for being duplicative of IBM's patents).
Why not just write 0s or 1s all over writeable area? I mean each and every sector on each track on each platter. Why all the grinding and shredding? Unless it is somehow possible to recover WIPED data, it should not be neccessary..
It is possible to still retrieve the data. A hard drive never, ever, ever has a zero or one written on it. Instead (if I can accurately sum this up in a non-technical way that doesnt invalidate my answer), it has a close to "0" or close to "1" written. Much like how certain electronic chips (that lets say are +5 = on, 0 = off) arent truly at +5 or zero. A "threshold value" is used to determine on or off.
In the case of hard drives, assuming "0" and "1" are the desired results, a zero gets "written" to the disk (which ends up being a.0020919) or a one gets written (which ends up being a.98298329) - gotta remember it's not an actual number written - it's something that (loosely) corresponds with a voltage/magnetic resistance that indicates 0 or 1 when compared to a threshold... thus.1 or less may be 0,.9 or more may be 1, and anything inbetween indicates errors.
The government (various parts - the requirements vary) mandates multiple wipes, because there are recovery tools out there, that by reading the actual magnetic/electrical value can interpolate what the data was after a single wipe. The reason apparently being, setting from "1" to "0" (or vice versa) leaves enough of the residual one to determine it was a one.
Thats (I can guarantee you) a very poor attempt at explaining it, but the basic theory behind what I am trying to say is correct...
A better idea would be to read up on it for a better explanation...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_remanence
Data remanence is the residual representation of data that has been in some way nominally erased or removed. This residue may be due to data being left intact by a nominal delete operation, or through physical properties of the storage medium.
Scroll down the article to the section on "The Gutmann Method" to see why (a format is not acceptable means of wiping a drive).
A key point to this discussion is that "as of Nov 2007, overwriting is no longer a DoD-acceptable sanitization method for magnetic media. Only degaussing or physical destruction is acceptable." (Wikipedia)
This I find interesting timing, since it coincides with many requests for info and/or discovery of such info - that now, the DoD requires to be non-recoverable...
Read your regulations. HIPPA (medical record) regulations alone require the destruction of any data like that using national-security level tools. Either you break the drive itself, you push it through one hell of a magnetic field a certain number of times, or you use one hell of an overwriting tool that makes 16+ passes on the drive to ensure that traces of previous data are completely gone.
While your premise is correct, just like HIPAA, I am sure their policy is quite flawed. HIPAA is quite thorough in some areas, and quite vague in others, and not sufficiently up to today's standards in others. As a matter of fact, there's even the "Updated Unofficial Version of HIPAA" hosted by one of those who maintain the info on it (hhs.gov).
Dont presume that because there are regulations (even ones that seem very specific in some cases) that those regulations are (a) all correct methods/good methods, (b) all thorough, (c) all inclusive, and/or (d) not flawed because another section allows something retarded.
Now, on to another point... I dont think anyone is claiming that properly destroying the data (through whatever valid method) on those hard drives is a bad or wrong thing. I think the problem is, since they are required to keep the data for a certain number of years, that they should have retrievable backups of the data someplace. Destroying a hard drive in a system that no longer accesses the information is one thing - but what does that have to do with destroying the backups that their own laws and regulations require they keep?
From what I can see, most people didn't give a damn about the warrantless wiretapping. At least not enough to actually act on their feelings.
From what I can see, most people dont even know it was - or still is - going on. And the few that do fit two categories: the ones who are convinced it is for our safety in "The War On Terror" - and the ones who realize it's a violation of our rights that has very little to do with "The War On Terror"
Of course people don't care about something they dont know or believe is going on.... what that fix, your statements are correct.
A simple patent search will find a plethora of patents that overlap or cover her idea...
The interesting thing is so many patents were issued on this - including numerous ones that seem to be the same (technology wise) as the one she claims she received in 1993. Oddly, I cant find her patent...
Either way, this should be interesting - especially since she is taking a non-normal route to pursue the situation. (ITC, etc).
Good DB admins make the money they make for a reason -- administration makes a HUGE difference in the performance of databases, and many of the techniques used to tune database performance are nonstandard and nonportable. Even if you had "exactly the same setup" on both databases, one would have been configured in an inferior way, because each database requires its own brand of trickery. 4m37s vs. 14s could, potentially, be merely the difference between skillful and unskillful database administration.
It could be... but I admitted that was a possibility.:-)
Worse, it seems you're talking about drastically different data models. Did.NET create the bad data model, or did it merely enable morons (or bright yet ignorant people) to create a product? There's nothing wrong with enabling morons (or bright yet ignorant people) to get a little bit of work done, even if it doesn't result in blazing performance. Even allowing for that difference, it's obvious that a 126-table model was solving a larger problem than your 9-table model. A design that doesn't scale is a crappy solution for *any* problem, but you have no evidence that you could have solved the larger problem well -- you solved a different one. You probably solved exactly the problem your company needed solved, which is possible for an insider to do, but a difficult thing for an outsider, even when creating bespoke software. How can you expect us to believe that.NET was the problem when the business analysis behind the.NET implementation was clearly drastically wrong?
You would think that was the case - but in actuality, my tables store more than twice the info as the 126 table model... and leave out absolutely nothing that is contained in the 126 table model. That one is poor design. The other one (the other competitor's 9 table model) is pretty identical in layout.
All three solve the same problem (ie: the report in question) which MUST (by law) utilize the same data, calculate it the exact same way, come up with the exact same results... so no, there is no difference there. Some of each tables are not needed for the report - and arent called at all. The others (which are called) require the same exact data...
In any case, the massive difference in performance is a common-sense giveaway that you aren't looking at a meaningful comparison between platforms or database engines. I'm a Linux guy, and I personally hate Visual Studio and its code generators, but your comparison is exactly the kind of thing that gives upper management an excuse to cut engineers out of the loop on technology platform decisions. There's no evidence that.NET had anything to do with the performance differences you saw. Alternative explanations (bad data modeling, bad requirements analysis) are screaming in your face, and you have no way of ruling out the possibility that the MSSQL database was poorly administered. Yet you are eager to implicate.NET (though you have now introduced MSSQL into the mix as well -- what exactly does its performance have to do with.NET?) The engineers are just anti-M$ whiners, right? Well, I guess sometimes they are. And that's a big part of the reason why CTOs end up wrapped around a M$ salesman's finger, floating in fantasies of systems that scale effortlessly and internal tools that magically integrate when you need them, while their engineers scream, "No! Wake up! Wake up!"
Perhaps... the REXX implementation is running on eComStation and MySQL v5... the Windows.NET implementation is running on a considerably more powerful machine (2 faster cores, compared to one for eComStation - 2GB RAM compared to 1GB for eComStation) and MSSQL. I have found (well, so has IBM for that matter) that for things like that, OS/2 outperforms Windows by a large margin - and XP uses a lot more resources
Did it ever occur to you that the software in question was probably crap? I've done reporting using.NET and SQL Server over a moderate data set (a few gigabytes) and always had the report generate in a few seconds. The.NET framework would be the last thing I would look at for performance problems.
If I still worked at CompUSA (if there was even still one around), I'd be sure to let Microsoft who had a big part in writing it, know. Part of the software was Siebel's (ie: Siebel/MS joint project) and the other part was Microsoft's (ie: Microsoft's).
Your experiences do not jive with numerous complaints about.Net/MsSQL's poor performance - nor with my experiences. But don't take that the wrong way - I am not saying your experiences are untrue. You probably have a setup that works under different load conditions... ours (CompUSA's) worked under conditions where 229 stores were connected to the database - a scenario where the MS products do not seem to scale up to very well (while oddly, Postgres, MySQL and DB/2 handle with ease).
Other situations I have compared with are custom EMS database engines... I have compared (using the exact same data) results on two different locally run with local data MSSQL setups with a MySQL setup through a network with an interpreted REXX engine generating the same reports).
MSSQL: 4min 37sec.
MySQL: 14 seconds (including network time and an 80,000 line HTML report being sent).
The report reads a LOT of data and generates MANY pages of output - hence the 80,000 lines of HTML.
The results were not even remotely close. Both MSSQL based software were written and compiled using MS's Tools, accessing local data via the local, compiled program... (while the REXX engine is just interpreted - through a web server no less - over a network from the client to the database and report engine). Now it is possible BOTH companies just did a very poor job in writing their software - while I did a better job (I wont claim to be great at db stuff, but I do like optimization planning when creating a table or search query). One of the competitor's software used a database structure very similar to ours (but who knows what weird stuff was being done in the query) - while the other one uses 126 tables for the same data (compared to mine and the other's 9 tables)... and all 3 (mine and theirs) required "sorting", loading, and calculating the reports from the entire data set (ie: it's not like they were grabbing too much data - they and I both have to grab all of the data to generate the report).
Your experiences apparently vary... but those are two of mine (one where there are a couple hundred users, the other with one user at a time, and an identical data set).
I hate to say it, but whether "Naughty Bob" is normally a troll or not, I suspect he is correct.
MS has yet to show the type of design innovation that foregoes bloated code. Instead, when something doesnt work, or wasnt planned out correctly, they just add a bunch more stuff, then a bunch more, then a bunch more... then pat themselves on the back for the "innovation" which they equate with the number of things added.
Writing an extensible framework - and then extensions (or example extensions) would have been smarter, smaller, faster, and easier for true developers to implement.
The "Everything - including the kitchen sink" attitude does not work well in the computer world - the fact that their programs and apps are getting far more bloated, barely gain additional functionality (regardless of their claims) and getting far more resource hungry (while not adding significant functionality) is a perfect example - and one I think they are following with.Net
To me, it looks more like they are trying to prove that they can compete with, and surpass, all their.Net competition by sheer number of "features"/"capabilities" - which does not make it better. Their.Net framework already scaled horrendously to many types of implementations (like the Service/Customer tracking unit CompUSA used to use - as any of you who worked in Tech or Business Sales can attest to - from fond memories of running a rather simple report, going out for coffee and a quick breakfast, coming back, and still having 10 minutes to wait (of a total 30-40 minutes) - nor were the data sets that big, or the front end complex).
I'm far happier with using ________________ (pick almost anything else used in the non-Windows world), and far happier extending base classes and functions, over using pre-written bloatware versions.
But then again, besides the competition aspect, I think they are also trying to woo companies that can hire even less expensive "developers" since sooooooooooo many more things have been added making development a matter of point and click (and requiring even less actual development skills)... it seems more like a two prong attack against their competition.
Great, that's fine... nothing wrong with that - if it's not at the sacrifice of security, performance, and interoperability. But of course, it does sacrifice all of those... and really doesnt seem to do much at all.
So many of the new methods and classes are all stuff that the originals should have allowed the extensibility for to begin with. And so many should be variants on the same method (SOM anyone? Compare the SOM/DSOM design to just the first few lines listed in the article).
...so tell me again, how is "Naughty Bob's" post flamebait? No one who has responded to him has yet said why.
Feel free to mod this anything you want... doing so wont change reality.
I think you are confusing peoples inability to communicte effectively rather than peoples ignorance of available OS.
Trust me, I am not. Most people have no clue what Linux, OS/2, BeOS, ReactOS, eComStation... etc are. Until recently (thanks to a plethora of commercials), most people didnt know what MacOSX was and thought it was a version of Windows - many still do. First hand experience dealing with thousands of customers in the last 3 years tells me that. I've even had customers who dont understand what Vista is... "So, Vista is Windows XP?" (seriously).
I think you are confusing yours and my and virtually any slashdotter's innate knowledge with the average user's lack thereof on such topics.
As with most things tech, people just want to buy a computer that works and "does what their friends'/colleagues' computer does" (which with Windows entrenched in the marketplace, means Windows PCs) and like every other tech thing out there, they dont spend any time learning what it runs, how it runs, what it runs on - they just want to know that it runs (and runs what they need/what their friends use/do). In not getting farther than that, many definitely have a lack of knowledge/understanding of what an OS is - much less that there are choices of OS's out there.
What version of Linux or Windows is on my flatscreen? Or is it some custom embedded OS? Well, I dont know... but I do know it's just not "a flat TV set" and has some sort of OS, apps, software and hardware decoders, etc - just like my DVD player that has updateable software decoders for non DVD content. The average user just needs to know that they stick in the disk, hit play, and by magic, things work.
MS has been very good at equating function=some MS product - and too many users aren't tech saavy enough to understand that is not the case.
I wouldn't give the credit for this to MS (at least not directly). It's just a by-product of being ubiqutious on the desktop. It's the same as calling a photocopier a Xerox machine, or saying a Zune is like an iPod manufactured by MS (heard someone say that on the radio today). Don't confuse computer illiterate users expressing things the only way they know how to, with subliminal marketing messages by MS.
I would... how about the "Internet" button? It's not like non-tech-savvy consumers came up with that idea on their own. Right on the Start Menu -> Internet. Or continually tying the (excellent choice of) name and phrase together of one of their Office components -> Word Document (which is what it is - a word document - which helps equate that to create a word document you need Word).
The list goes on and on... some may have been intentional... some may just have happened and MS capitalized on them... and some may be because consumers still dont realize there are choices - but they all amount to the same end result.:-(
Why the parent has not yet been modded up, I dont know (well, the day is still early). This (perception) issue is definitely key to the "interoperability" issue with Linux and Windows - because even if Linux fully interoperated with Windows, the perception that a MS product is a certain task/function must still be overcome.
Well -- parent wasn't that insightful;). The perception problem exists -- this is true. But it's not completely unfounded. Firefox people have done a fantastic job of decoupling "Internet" and "Internet Explorer". But OOo doesn't go nearly that far with Office file formats. Same arguments can be made for a great many applications. Desktop performance/usability/general-application-buginess-and-UI-inconsistency issues with Linux don't help either. And then part of the problem is just unavoidable and to be expected. I mean, even if you're switching from Windows to a Mac or a Mac to Windows you'd have a bit of a learning curve. There's no point in expecting them all to work the same way, and there's no escaping the fact that the most dominant platform is the one that will be on the advantageous side of this perception problem.
Well, ok, maybe parent wasn't that insightful;-)
As for the rest... for most uses, OOo seems to import virtually everything decently - with few exceptions. I run OS/2 and am "stuck" running OOo - and have to use it to import Word/Excel docs all the time. The biggest issue I have is having to reset page margins when someone changes them to something very small on Word/Excel (ie: changes the default.5"/whatever to.2" or something). It's not perfect yet - maybe it never will be - but I still think it isn't yet relevant (except to people like us) even if it were perfect. For the average user? Well, my Mom is using it just fine, with just a little bit of playing around with it and learning how to adjust the few issues with importing she has. Not for everyone yet? Perhaps. Cant debate that.
Desktop performance/usability/general-application-buginess-and-UI-inconsistency issues with Linux don't help either.
But, MS helps VERY much in that respect, since Windows users are learning to get used to and deal with those same types of issues!!!!;-)
On a more serious note (not that I wasnt serious there... so maybe I should say "On a second note regarding that topic"), until a company decides to make a big push with Linux into the consumer market (and manages to - unlike the faltered "Linux at Walmart" effort), I dont think this yet matters.
I think you're delusional if you think the average computer user feels locked into MS products.
My experience is the average computer user believes MS products are the only ones available.
This is too sadly true... anyone who has worked in tech support or repair in a consumer based, Windows based environment can attest to that. The number of times an average Windows user has told me
"I clicked on the Internet and..." (umm, IE is NOT the Internet)
"I need to buy a new Windows for my ______" (umm, do you mean a computer with Windows on it?)
"So that MAC is Windows?" (no, hardware is not an OS...)
"My Windows isn't turning on - it keeps telling me 'Drive Failure'" (no, your hardware/mobo/BIOS is telling you that - your computer hasnt even started loading Windows)
"So, OpenOffice is Word?" (Ugh... no - but it is compatible for what you would need it for - and FREE.) - customer proceeds to buy a copy of Office because "that can't be true... it's not (Microsoft/Office/etc)"
"Well, someone installed Firefox for me, but I needed to get on the Internet, so I clicked the Internet button (IE again)." (IE is NOT the Internet)
Heck, many users even seem to think that Office is part of Windows (and thus many would wonder why that part of Windows stopped working in 60 days - when the trial expired - we actually had customers come into CompUSA who threatened to sue us and HP/Compaq/etc because that "part of" Windows broke, and we wouldn't fix it and told them they had to pay to get it "fixed" - no matter how many times we explained it to them or showed them the "60 Day Trial" icon). Heck, the number of people who think you cannot create a Word (compatible) document - much less any document - without Office - is astounding.
MS has been very good at equating function=some MS product - and too many users aren't tech saavy enough to understand that is not the case.
Why the parent has not yet been modded up, I dont know (well, the day is still early). This (perception) issue is definitely key to the "interoperability" issue with Linux and Windows - because even if Linux fully interoperated with Windows, the perception that a MS product is a certain task/function must still be overcome.
Slashdot Mirror
As cool as that would be, I'd rather have Mjolnir and use that to control the storms...
Just a thought...
Though I didnt write this list (I DO have more of a life than that!), I thought it cool...
http://www.aibuiltpc.com/THOR_and_Mjolnir.html
They got detainees in Gitmo, that have been there for years with out trial or eve being charged with a crime.
Somehow I don't think the rhetoric of "You used illegal surveillance to jail me", will do much to convince them to let you go.
Our government will do anything it wants, and no one is going to stop them. We the people have already show how apathetic we are to this treatment.
But hay, enough with all this thinking and having opinions; American Idol and Survivor are on!
And there's nothing to prevent this same administration from passing laws making such evidence....
A very long cord? Just a thought... :-)
LoL! Isn't that STILL the case? :-)
We really need a "+1 Sad but True" mod choice...
Dont mind me, I was just in a silly mood when I posted that :-)
Or... we could use the land for other things...
next, no landfil in the history of the USA has ever leaked a hazardous chemical that has entered a water supply. If you look into how these things are made, you'll see why.Hmmm... Staten Island and Long Island anyone? In S.I. it's local waterways. On Long Island, it's DRINKING water that gets affected in the not-so-deep wells that feed western LI's drinking water supply.
I'm sure there are other affected areas as well... those are just the ones I know of because... ummm... I live here and get to read about the problems.
Next, grocery bags contain cornstarch aditives, and break down nearly 100 times faster than their paper equivolents in landfills.
Paper bags require more energy to make, cause more environmental damage to make (all those deisel engines cutting down forests and hauling away trees), take more warehouse space, more landfil space, and actually take LONGER to biodegrade.Actually, a paper bag will dissolve quite nicely into ground/plant nutrients with just some moisture - and still quicker than a plastic bag - even though they have done wonders in that area. But even so, plastic bags exposed to light and the elements dissolve decently fast - but when you bury one, well, not as fast.
All but the "longer to biodegrade" part. Again, NOT longer (to deteriorate), and I dont think you understand the meaning of the word "biodegrade" - it's paper - what is there to biodegrade?
Ah, but the speed of light is absolute no matter what the reference point is, so technically, it'd be the same speed, whether you or the hand was moving.
Ah, but the speed of light is NOT constant, and I am baffled by the fact that people still think it is.
Heck, just recently, a bunch of scientists (Google it yourself) figured out how to stop a photon.
But that aside, I believe you are discussing "the speed of light in a vacuum" - which is at best, still a theoretical extrapolation (unless you can tell me of some location we have measured it that is indeed a true vacuum) and (presumed to be) in an area where the light will not interact with other energy forms such as gravity (to name just one).
And of course, there are still some doubts as to how the measurement devices and technology used to make such "speed estimates" affects the results.
And not back to the point you were referencing in the post you replied to - that's based on the theories of a man who, according to various scientists of the day, had an inadequate understanding of (the speed of) light, relativity and quantum physics... which brings up many problems in anything based off such theories - the most layman problem being a photon has mass (even at rest) - even if infinitesimal. So... when that photon is travelling at the speed of light (which they seem to do quite often), that photon has infinite mass. Interesting. We're talking solar-system wide destruction whenever someone turns on their headlights on their car... I'd shudder to think of the destruction level if say... the sun... started emitting photons at the speed of light.
But then again, photons only theoretically have mass....
Thus, what you probably meant to say is that:
"Based off our current perceptions of reality, and assuming reality tends to agree with those perceptions (even if not universally held perceptions at that), it would theoretically (not technically) be the same speed, whether your hand was moving or not".
Sorry, I'm bored, and this was mostly intended to be a humorous reminder that theories (regardless of how widely used or believed) are still just theories - and like the world being flat and nothing ever being able to exceed the speed of sound - often proven wrong at some later date.
Moderators: I'm going for a +.5 Funny/+.5 Insightful - or a -1 Annoying. Take your pick.
Indeed. While the state of Windows security is far from perfect, Windows machines "just sitting around" aren't ticking time bombs (assuming, as the poster did, that it remains patched to most current levels, etc) any more than OS X, et al.
Sorry... I coulda sworn I still saw updates and hotfixes that dealt with buffer overflows and underflows and similar issues which wouldnt take much more than finding a Windows machine and exploiting that hole. And I coulda sworn that as many times as people think MS has corrected all such issues, someone finds a similar new exploit shortly after the earlier ones are "corrected"
Gotta remember, many people dont have a real firewall (heck, many people think that silly little button in XP to "enable firewall" actually IS a (real) firewall). And of course, a decent number of people still dont have ISPs that block the dangerous Windows ports that other ISPs block...
Every modern OS spreads threads across CPUs. This may have been cool when OS/2 was new, but it's old hat now.
Most apps are single-threaded. There's nothing the OS can do about that. There is ongoing work to compile apps written with one thread in mind to (safely) take advantage of multiple processors, but that work has been ongoing for 20+ years without a lot of traction.
(By "thread" I really mean "execution context" - people wrote code that took advantage of multiple processors for decades before the simplifying idea of "threads" was popularized - but still most apps don't do asynchronous I/O either.)
Well, actually, I think you misunderstand my point. The core OS (OS/2) is highly threaded. Even things like running a DOS or Win31 session under OS/2 gets handled by more than one thread which the OS can automatically spawn across CPUs. Windows does not do that for monolithic apps. Under Windows, the app must be written to take advantage of more than one CPU. Under OS/2, it will automatically spawn new threads on different CPUs, or service calls made to the OS over multiple CPUs - all without the program ever knowing (or being written to do so).
The other big differences are in CPU utilization (OS/2 scales more efficiently on more CPUs still to this day), Windows still doesnt have very useful 64 core (or 64 CPU) support - while OS/2 has had it for years (over a decade). Another difference is that native OS/2 apps are supposed to be (but aren't always) at least 2 threads... the GUI/UI related thread, and the processing thread (or threads), meaning every OS/2 app should, out of the box, be able to take advantage of more than one CPU. Heck, the GUI alone often spawns more threads than all of Windows creates.
On certain monolithic apps, the gain isn't anything too impressive - but it is there and is noticeable. On apps like Firefox and OOo, the gain is quite very noticeable - even with them not designed for multicore out of the box.
So... no, it wasn't just cool then... it still is to this day, and is an area where Windows is lacking.
Not exactly true. That is the case with Windows and a variety of other OS's, but not with all other OS's.
Under OS/2, any app can take advantage of multicore or SMP without having been written for it. Since the core of the OS was designed for 1-64 CPUs, whenever the app calls the OS to do something, it can (and does) spawn tasks/threads across multiple CPUs. And, for the rare app that cannot run using SMP, it has a tool to mark the exe to only use one CPU.
Apps using entirely their own libraries probably wouldn't benefit (but then again, I doubt those apps could even really exist since some service they use has to be handled by the OS - such as disk or screen or user IO).
The difference is OS/2 is highly threaded and designed for it... the Windows line was not designed in such fashion, leaving multicore benefits to (only) those apps that actually support it.
But your base point is indeed quite correct. SMP and multicore have been around for well over a decade in the Windows and OS/2 world... as you stated and/or inferred, that was no reason for Vista, since the support already existed (since before XP, and Win2K for that matter).
Meaning... 2013 or 2014? Just an (un)educated guess based off what their previous initial "planned release dates" translate into on the real world calendar.
...one day I would love to see what sort of calendar MS uses for when they first announce a planned release date...
It's funny how reality can often be so humorous.
Which is why every computer shop, or company worried about security, or technician, should make their own.
It's pretty easy actually - through about a dozen methods, including *nix or eComStation live boot disks with ClamAV, et al installed, or using BartPE and building the tools into the ISO, or using Hirens and doing the same, or... well, you get the point... the list of choices are plenty.
And with a rewritable, it is pretty easy to update the disk every day by dragging the updated definitions/apps into the correct directory (or with the tiny cost of CDs, burn a new one every day - or with a good selection of NIC drivers on a Bart disk, let the programs auto update the definitions through the Internet before it even touches the machine's hard drives).
I agree it would be kinda nice if a company made such a product - but what company out there does a good job at dealing with all the threats possible on a PC? You'd still need multiple solutions... the only one I know of that comes close is Spyware Terminator since you can enable ClamAV support. But even so, I prefer the "multiple solutions to each issue" method, namely because even with every program updated, while there is a high level of overlap (eg: they all agree on/find 99% of the viruses and spyware and trojans on a computer; each finds just a few more that the other programs in their category dont). As a neat example, one machine that the customer insisted we could not wipe and needed to clean (5 digit list of infections) required 6 different software packages to find them all... oddly there were two viruses that everything but an outdated McAfee found (we checked, they definitely were infected)... yet ClamAV and 3 other packages missed it. On the other hand, we clean one of our customer's systems with ClamAV to grab everything that Norton and McAfee miss.
So, I prefer the "roll your own" approach :-) And I am guessing that anyone who needs to do true scans/cleaning of their systems also use multiple tools if such issues are critical to them.
I know they're clean because I keep them clean on a day-to-day basis by not installing tons of random crap I found in the net.toilet, keeping applications and plug-ins (and pointless upgrades!) to a bare minimum, and keeping an eye on the security bulletins. It's not rocket science, but it is kind of computer science.Sadly, as anyone who does this day in and day out can tell you, that is not enough to ensure a system is clean. Windows (any version, any service pack) does not need any user intervention or use to get infected. I'm not saying it is horrendous (nor am I saying it's not - not making any statement either way)... what I am saying is that machines do get infected even with all updates installed - and no user in front of the keyboard.
The patent probably in question is related to the "S506" interface... it exists, many drivers in certain OSs are named after it, like IBM's IBM1S506, others' DaniS506, etc.
The problem will be them proving the patent excludes a storage mechanism communicating with a computer (especially via different interfaces like SATA), since IBM holds quite a number of quite earlier (1950's) patents on such things - and I kind of doubt the steps neccessary (and outlined) in Seagate's patent are even implementable on a SSD drive... head movement? actuator arms? spindle and stepper motor controllers? There really isn't much left once you take out the hard disk portion (platters, spindle, actuator arm, r/w heads) and have replaced the IDE interface with something else.
So my guess is it is NOT valid - for if any part of the patent's claims ARE valid, then IBM's patents related to the original tech would be even more valid and supercede any such claims on Seagate's part (unless their patent should not have been granted with those portions in at all for being duplicative of IBM's patents).
It is possible to still retrieve the data. A hard drive never, ever, ever has a zero or one written on it. Instead (if I can accurately sum this up in a non-technical way that doesnt invalidate my answer), it has a close to "0" or close to "1" written. Much like how certain electronic chips (that lets say are +5 = on, 0 = off) arent truly at +5 or zero. A "threshold value" is used to determine on or off.
In the case of hard drives, assuming "0" and "1" are the desired results, a zero gets "written" to the disk (which ends up being a .0020919) or a one gets written (which ends up being a .98298329) - gotta remember it's not an actual number written - it's something that (loosely) corresponds with a voltage/magnetic resistance that indicates 0 or 1 when compared to a threshold... thus .1 or less may be 0, .9 or more may be 1, and anything inbetween indicates errors.
The government (various parts - the requirements vary) mandates multiple wipes, because there are recovery tools out there, that by reading the actual magnetic/electrical value can interpolate what the data was after a single wipe. The reason apparently being, setting from "1" to "0" (or vice versa) leaves enough of the residual one to determine it was a one.
Thats (I can guarantee you) a very poor attempt at explaining it, but the basic theory behind what I am trying to say is correct...
A better idea would be to read up on it for a better explanation...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_remanence
Data remanence is the residual representation of data that has been in some way nominally erased or removed. This residue may be due to data being left intact by a nominal delete operation, or through physical properties of the storage medium.Scroll down the article to the section on "The Gutmann Method" to see why (a format is not acceptable means of wiping a drive).
A key point to this discussion is that "as of Nov 2007, overwriting is no longer a DoD-acceptable sanitization method for magnetic media. Only degaussing or physical destruction is acceptable." (Wikipedia)
This I find interesting timing, since it coincides with many requests for info and/or discovery of such info - that now, the DoD requires to be non-recoverable...
While your premise is correct, just like HIPAA, I am sure their policy is quite flawed. HIPAA is quite thorough in some areas, and quite vague in others, and not sufficiently up to today's standards in others. As a matter of fact, there's even the "Updated Unofficial Version of HIPAA" hosted by one of those who maintain the info on it (hhs.gov).
Dont presume that because there are regulations (even ones that seem very specific in some cases) that those regulations are (a) all correct methods/good methods, (b) all thorough, (c) all inclusive, and/or (d) not flawed because another section allows something retarded.
Now, on to another point... I dont think anyone is claiming that properly destroying the data (through whatever valid method) on those hard drives is a bad or wrong thing. I think the problem is, since they are required to keep the data for a certain number of years, that they should have retrievable backups of the data someplace. Destroying a hard drive in a system that no longer accesses the information is one thing - but what does that have to do with destroying the backups that their own laws and regulations require they keep?
Thus your point really doesnt apply...
From what I can see, most people didn't give a damn about the warrantless wiretapping. At least not enough to actually act on their feelings.
From what I can see, most people dont even know it was - or still is - going on. And the few that do fit two categories: the ones who are convinced it is for our safety in "The War On Terror" - and the ones who realize it's a violation of our rights that has very little to do with "The War On Terror"
Of course people don't care about something they dont know or believe is going on.... what that fix, your statements are correct.
A simple patent search will find a plethora of patents that overlap or cover her idea...
The interesting thing is so many patents were issued on this - including numerous ones that seem to be the same (technology wise) as the one she claims she received in 1993. Oddly, I cant find her patent...
Either way, this should be interesting - especially since she is taking a non-normal route to pursue the situation. (ITC, etc).
Makes me scared of having "Link Prefetch" enabled in Firefox...
Good DB admins make the money they make for a reason -- administration makes a HUGE difference in the performance of databases, and many of the techniques used to tune database performance are nonstandard and nonportable. Even if you had "exactly the same setup" on both databases, one would have been configured in an inferior way, because each database requires its own brand of trickery. 4m37s vs. 14s could, potentially, be merely the difference between skillful and unskillful database administration.
It could be... but I admitted that was a possibility. :-)
Worse, it seems you're talking about drastically different data models. Did .NET create the bad data model, or did it merely enable morons (or bright yet ignorant people) to create a product? There's nothing wrong with enabling morons (or bright yet ignorant people) to get a little bit of work done, even if it doesn't result in blazing performance. Even allowing for that difference, it's obvious that a 126-table model was solving a larger problem than your 9-table model. A design that doesn't scale is a crappy solution for *any* problem, but you have no evidence that you could have solved the larger problem well -- you solved a different one. You probably solved exactly the problem your company needed solved, which is possible for an insider to do, but a difficult thing for an outsider, even when creating bespoke software. How can you expect us to believe that .NET was the problem when the business analysis behind the .NET implementation was clearly drastically wrong?
You would think that was the case - but in actuality, my tables store more than twice the info as the 126 table model... and leave out absolutely nothing that is contained in the 126 table model. That one is poor design. The other one (the other competitor's 9 table model) is pretty identical in layout.
All three solve the same problem (ie: the report in question) which MUST (by law) utilize the same data, calculate it the exact same way, come up with the exact same results... so no, there is no difference there. Some of each tables are not needed for the report - and arent called at all. The others (which are called) require the same exact data...
In any case, the massive difference in performance is a common-sense giveaway that you aren't looking at a meaningful comparison between platforms or database engines. I'm a Linux guy, and I personally hate Visual Studio and its code generators, but your comparison is exactly the kind of thing that gives upper management an excuse to cut engineers out of the loop on technology platform decisions. There's no evidence that .NET had anything to do with the performance differences you saw. Alternative explanations (bad data modeling, bad requirements analysis) are screaming in your face, and you have no way of ruling out the possibility that the MSSQL database was poorly administered. Yet you are eager to implicate .NET (though you have now introduced MSSQL into the mix as well -- what exactly does its performance have to do with .NET?) The engineers are just anti-M$ whiners, right? Well, I guess sometimes they are. And that's a big part of the reason why CTOs end up wrapped around a M$ salesman's finger, floating in fantasies of systems that scale effortlessly and internal tools that magically integrate when you need them, while their engineers scream, "No! Wake up! Wake up!"
Perhaps... the REXX implementation is running on eComStation and MySQL v5... the Windows .NET implementation is running on a considerably more powerful machine (2 faster cores, compared to one for eComStation - 2GB RAM compared to 1GB for eComStation) and MSSQL. I have found (well, so has IBM for that matter) that for things like that, OS/2 outperforms Windows by a large margin - and XP uses a lot more resources
If I still worked at CompUSA (if there was even still one around), I'd be sure to let Microsoft who had a big part in writing it, know. Part of the software was Siebel's (ie: Siebel/MS joint project) and the other part was Microsoft's (ie: Microsoft's).
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2005/oct05/10-17SiebelAssemblyNETPR.mspx
Your experiences do not jive with numerous complaints about .Net/MsSQL's poor performance - nor with my experiences. But don't take that the wrong way - I am not saying your experiences are untrue. You probably have a setup that works under different load conditions... ours (CompUSA's) worked under conditions where 229 stores were connected to the database - a scenario where the MS products do not seem to scale up to very well (while oddly, Postgres, MySQL and DB/2 handle with ease).
Other situations I have compared with are custom EMS database engines... I have compared (using the exact same data) results on two different locally run with local data MSSQL setups with a MySQL setup through a network with an interpreted REXX engine generating the same reports).
MSSQL: 4min 37sec.
MySQL: 14 seconds (including network time and an 80,000 line HTML report being sent).
The report reads a LOT of data and generates MANY pages of output - hence the 80,000 lines of HTML.
The results were not even remotely close. Both MSSQL based software were written and compiled using MS's Tools, accessing local data via the local, compiled program... (while the REXX engine is just interpreted - through a web server no less - over a network from the client to the database and report engine). Now it is possible BOTH companies just did a very poor job in writing their software - while I did a better job (I wont claim to be great at db stuff, but I do like optimization planning when creating a table or search query). One of the competitor's software used a database structure very similar to ours (but who knows what weird stuff was being done in the query) - while the other one uses 126 tables for the same data (compared to mine and the other's 9 tables)... and all 3 (mine and theirs) required "sorting", loading, and calculating the reports from the entire data set (ie: it's not like they were grabbing too much data - they and I both have to grab all of the data to generate the report).
Your experiences apparently vary... but those are two of mine (one where there are a couple hundred users, the other with one user at a time, and an identical data set).
Define "crapton"...
;-)
I hate to say it, but whether "Naughty Bob" is normally a troll or not, I suspect he is correct.
MS has yet to show the type of design innovation that foregoes bloated code. Instead, when something doesnt work, or wasnt planned out correctly, they just add a bunch more stuff, then a bunch more, then a bunch more... then pat themselves on the back for the "innovation" which they equate with the number of things added.
Writing an extensible framework - and then extensions (or example extensions) would have been smarter, smaller, faster, and easier for true developers to implement.
The "Everything - including the kitchen sink" attitude does not work well in the computer world - the fact that their programs and apps are getting far more bloated, barely gain additional functionality (regardless of their claims) and getting far more resource hungry (while not adding significant functionality) is a perfect example - and one I think they are following with .Net
To me, it looks more like they are trying to prove that they can compete with, and surpass, all their .Net competition by sheer number of "features"/"capabilities" - which does not make it better. Their .Net framework already scaled horrendously to many types of implementations (like the Service/Customer tracking unit CompUSA used to use - as any of you who worked in Tech or Business Sales can attest to - from fond memories of running a rather simple report, going out for coffee and a quick breakfast, coming back, and still having 10 minutes to wait (of a total 30-40 minutes) - nor were the data sets that big, or the front end complex).
I'm far happier with using ________________ (pick almost anything else used in the non-Windows world), and far happier extending base classes and functions, over using pre-written bloatware versions.
But then again, besides the competition aspect, I think they are also trying to woo companies that can hire even less expensive "developers" since sooooooooooo many more things have been added making development a matter of point and click (and requiring even less actual development skills)... it seems more like a two prong attack against their competition.
Great, that's fine... nothing wrong with that - if it's not at the sacrifice of security, performance, and interoperability. But of course, it does sacrifice all of those... and really doesnt seem to do much at all.
So many of the new methods and classes are all stuff that the originals should have allowed the extensibility for to begin with. And so many should be variants on the same method (SOM anyone? Compare the SOM/DSOM design to just the first few lines listed in the article).
...so tell me again, how is "Naughty Bob's" post flamebait? No one who has responded to him has yet said why.
Feel free to mod this anything you want... doing so wont change reality.
Trust me, I am not. Most people have no clue what Linux, OS/2, BeOS, ReactOS, eComStation... etc are. Until recently (thanks to a plethora of commercials), most people didnt know what MacOSX was and thought it was a version of Windows - many still do. First hand experience dealing with thousands of customers in the last 3 years tells me that. I've even had customers who dont understand what Vista is... "So, Vista is Windows XP?" (seriously).
I think you are confusing yours and my and virtually any slashdotter's innate knowledge with the average user's lack thereof on such topics.
As with most things tech, people just want to buy a computer that works and "does what their friends'/colleagues' computer does" (which with Windows entrenched in the marketplace, means Windows PCs) and like every other tech thing out there, they dont spend any time learning what it runs, how it runs, what it runs on - they just want to know that it runs (and runs what they need/what their friends use/do). In not getting farther than that, many definitely have a lack of knowledge/understanding of what an OS is - much less that there are choices of OS's out there.
What version of Linux or Windows is on my flatscreen? Or is it some custom embedded OS? Well, I dont know... but I do know it's just not "a flat TV set" and has some sort of OS, apps, software and hardware decoders, etc - just like my DVD player that has updateable software decoders for non DVD content. The average user just needs to know that they stick in the disk, hit play, and by magic, things work.
MS has been very good at equating function=some MS product - and too many users aren't tech saavy enough to understand that is not the case.
I wouldn't give the credit for this to MS (at least not directly). It's just a by-product of being ubiqutious on the desktop. It's the same as calling a photocopier a Xerox machine, or saying a Zune is like an iPod manufactured by MS (heard someone say that on the radio today). Don't confuse computer illiterate users expressing things the only way they know how to, with subliminal marketing messages by MS.
I would... how about the "Internet" button? It's not like non-tech-savvy consumers came up with that idea on their own. Right on the Start Menu -> Internet. Or continually tying the (excellent choice of) name and phrase together of one of their Office components -> Word Document (which is what it is - a word document - which helps equate that to create a word document you need Word).
The list goes on and on... some may have been intentional... some may just have happened and MS capitalized on them... and some may be because consumers still dont realize there are choices - but they all amount to the same end result. :-(
Why the parent has not yet been modded up, I dont know (well, the day is still early). This (perception) issue is definitely key to the "interoperability" issue with Linux and Windows - because even if Linux fully interoperated with Windows, the perception that a MS product is a certain task/function must still be overcome.
Well -- parent wasn't that insightful ;). The perception problem exists -- this is true. But it's not completely unfounded. Firefox people have done a fantastic job of decoupling "Internet" and "Internet Explorer". But OOo doesn't go nearly that far with Office file formats. Same arguments can be made for a great many applications. Desktop performance/usability/general-application-buginess-and-UI-inconsistency issues with Linux don't help either. And then part of the problem is just unavoidable and to be expected. I mean, even if you're switching from Windows to a Mac or a Mac to Windows you'd have a bit of a learning curve. There's no point in expecting them all to work the same way, and there's no escaping the fact that the most dominant platform is the one that will be on the advantageous side of this perception problem.
Well, ok, maybe parent wasn't that insightful ;-)
As for the rest... for most uses, OOo seems to import virtually everything decently - with few exceptions. I run OS/2 and am "stuck" running OOo - and have to use it to import Word/Excel docs all the time. The biggest issue I have is having to reset page margins when someone changes them to something very small on Word/Excel (ie: changes the default .5"/whatever to .2" or something). It's not perfect yet - maybe it never will be - but I still think it isn't yet relevant (except to people like us) even if it were perfect. For the average user? Well, my Mom is using it just fine, with just a little bit of playing around with it and learning how to adjust the few issues with importing she has. Not for everyone yet? Perhaps. Cant debate that.
Desktop performance/usability/general-application-buginess-and-UI-inconsistency issues with Linux don't help either.
But, MS helps VERY much in that respect, since Windows users are learning to get used to and deal with those same types of issues!!!! ;-)
On a more serious note (not that I wasnt serious there... so maybe I should say "On a second note regarding that topic"), until a company decides to make a big push with Linux into the consumer market (and manages to - unlike the faltered "Linux at Walmart" effort), I dont think this yet matters.
Unfortunately, when it comes to exposure, fact is
My experience is the average computer user believes MS products are the only ones available.
This is too sadly true... anyone who has worked in tech support or repair in a consumer based, Windows based environment can attest to that. The number of times an average Windows user has told me
"I clicked on the Internet and..." (umm, IE is NOT the Internet)
"I need to buy a new Windows for my ______" (umm, do you mean a computer with Windows on it?)
"So that MAC is Windows?" (no, hardware is not an OS...)
"My Windows isn't turning on - it keeps telling me 'Drive Failure'" (no, your hardware/mobo/BIOS is telling you that - your computer hasnt even started loading Windows)
"So, OpenOffice is Word?" (Ugh... no - but it is compatible for what you would need it for - and FREE.) - customer proceeds to buy a copy of Office because "that can't be true... it's not (Microsoft/Office/etc)"
"Well, someone installed Firefox for me, but I needed to get on the Internet, so I clicked the Internet button (IE again)." (IE is NOT the Internet)
Heck, many users even seem to think that Office is part of Windows (and thus many would wonder why that part of Windows stopped working in 60 days - when the trial expired - we actually had customers come into CompUSA who threatened to sue us and HP/Compaq/etc because that "part of" Windows broke, and we wouldn't fix it and told them they had to pay to get it "fixed" - no matter how many times we explained it to them or showed them the "60 Day Trial" icon). Heck, the number of people who think you cannot create a Word (compatible) document - much less any document - without Office - is astounding.
MS has been very good at equating function=some MS product - and too many users aren't tech saavy enough to understand that is not the case.
Why the parent has not yet been modded up, I dont know (well, the day is still early). This (perception) issue is definitely key to the "interoperability" issue with Linux and Windows - because even if Linux fully interoperated with Windows, the perception that a MS product is a certain task/function must still be overcome.