That was closer to 15 years ago now. I wish we could have "reasonable and prudent" back. We had to abandon it because we have such a small population and therefore tax base, and the Feds yanked our highway funding until we put in a speed limit.
Reasonable and prudent meant people weren't trying to go 70 mph over a mountain pass in the winter. It also meant I could go 110 mph on a sunny day on an empty stretch of road if it and my vehicle were in good shape.
It was not "NO SPEED LIMITS" it was "reasonable and prudent".
This has some benefits most don't consider, primarily in that with no posted speed limit, people don't feel compelled to go that speed when conditions do not permit. Montana has hundreds of miles of twisty, narrow roads that are poorly maintained and very dangerous when icy, which in some parts can be 8 months out of the year.
If you were going 100 mph on a road in a shitbox car and clearly not in full control of the vehicle you were pulled over and the fine was enormous.
"Reasonable and Prudent" was much safer than a flat 85 MPH.
Cell phone technology is still new, and the capabilities are still being learned.
This is true, and cell providers still haven't standardized even by region, let alone provider, how to send caller information to 911 dispatch stations. Every time a client of mine decides to deploy PhaseII at their center, programming has to come up with a new workaround for whatever weird quirk their local providers have with their service.
On the other hand, getting specifications and parameters from the telcos is like pulling teeth, even when it's for 911 call centers, so 3/4's of the time we end up having to figure out what's different on our own. Verizon definitely has the most quirky rebid setup of any of the providers we deal with.
For Exchange support, use Evolution. Photoshop, InDesign and Illustrator (CS2 at least, CS3 support is still being perfected) all work well in Wine. You can install IE 6 in Linux to run ActiveX if necessary, and there are firefox plug-ins to implement ActiveX as well. OpenOffice.org doesn't support VBA macros deliberately as they are a huge security risk. OxygenOffice, based on OpenOffice.org, does support them. As far as group policy updating, you've clearly never used APT.
Old meme is old. GNU/Linux is quite competent and capable in a Windows world.
On topic, I upgraded to Intrepid Ibex beta two weeks ago. The speed increase is palpable, and Hardy Heron was still much faster than XP, while being easier on the hardware (In XP and Vista, my CPU fan just runs constantly. In Linux, it only runs when I've been compiling a program for 15+ minutes).
No, it's not a file system object at all. The Workplace Shell keeps all "shadows" in its ini file. Shadows are visible to neither the command line nor non WPS-aware apps.
Since the WPS is almost always running, it's not an issue, but if you do what he says without the WPS running (e.g. you edit config.sys to force OS/2 to use CMD.EXE as the user environment), the shadow will not be updated. It will just show a broken link icon. While the WPS is running, it pays attention to what's happening in the command line, and will update shadows as necessary.
An interesting thing I found while tooling around with an OS/2 ini editor was that all files have a filename that users use, and then a hex string that the system uses, separate from the Extended Attributes. I suspect this is why you can relocate an installed program to another drive, and it will continue to work. The WPS simply points to the static hex value of each file, and the FS redirects to the filename.
Accidentally modded your post "redundant", so I'm replying with this useless comment to undo my moderation, since the new moderation system does not allow for mistakes.
Cheers.
Try thinking in bytes instead of stacks of things.
Think how much crap you can fit in one megabyte of space, vs one gigabyte. To me anyway, it's a lot more quantifiable than a room full of pennies, which just looks like a room full of pennies, and does not equate to any sort of tangible value. It's probably why companies stopped comparing storage capacities of computers to stacks of paper in the early 80's. After you got past a 50 foot stack of paper, it kinda became meaningless.
I've got a ThinkPad 360CE that still runs like a top, minus a dead battery.
Built in 1994, 486 DX-2 50Mhz, 20 megs RAM, 500 meg hard drive, 2.88 meg floppy, 9" SVGA LCD.
I stopped using it as my primary laptop back in 2000, but it's still my testbed for old software:) I just have to have it plugged in.
That machine has seen a lot of abuse. I got it when I was 13, and it got me through jr. high and high school.
The old ThinkPads were neat machines. Really innovative for the time, with features like a GUI bios (the pointer is a hummingbird), and on some machines a fold out "butterfly" keyboard. They're also indestructable.
Fair enough, though XP really was enough of an improvement over 98se to stand on its own merit, PlaySkool interface notwithstanding. It didn't need Me to make it seem that much better.
NT-OS/2 actually.
The way I understand it, the progression is as follows:
1.x (on DOS kernel) -> 1.01, 1.02, 1.03, 1.04
2.x (on DOS kernel) -> 2.03, 2.1 (Windows/286), 2.11 (Windows/386)
3.x (on DOS kernel) -> 3.0, 3.1, WFW 3.1, 3.11, WFW 3.11
3.x (new kernel, based on code originally slated to be OS/2 rewrite - known internally as NT-OS/2 for much of it's life, later simply WindowsNT) -> 3.1, 3.5, 3.51
4.x (on DOS kernel) -> 4.0 (Windows95), 4.1 (Windows98), 4.9 (WindowsME)
4.x (NT kernel) -> 4.0
5.x (NT kernel) -> 5.0 (Windows2000) 5.1 (WindowsXP)
6.x (NT kernel) -> Vista
7.x (presumably NT kernel) -> Windows7 (whatever it's final name is)
The story of Me is semi-interesting (actually not so much interesting as it is tedious). Basically, MS had intended NT 5.0 to be what XP actually became; they planned on merging the consumer and business platforms to a unified (NT) codebase (codenamed Neptune). NT 5.0's codebase was not finished with time enough to add all the features consumers needed, like compatability with 4.x and 3.x applications. The reason for naming NT 5.0 Windows2000 was to create a clear naming scheme for home users to upgrade, but by the time it became clear that 2000 would not be for home users, the name had already caught on. To prevent confusion, they revamped 98, adding Windows2000's icon set and interface enhancements, as well as a few odds and ends such as UPnP, to call it Millenium Edition, or Me.
Me really should never have existed, and it was quickly slapped together to avoid a marketing catastrophe. Unfortunately for Microsoft, Me is their Pinto. OTOH, it made XP that much more appealing.
Side note: NT starting at version 3 was a multi-reason decision, slightly influenced by it's relationship to OS/2, but much more due to marketing. NT started at version 3.1 because that was the version Windows was currently sitting at. Also, MS didn't want customers to think NT was less mature than OS/2 (then at version 2.1). NT got its name from the fact that they totally rewrote the OS/2 kernel, opting for a microkernel that was designed from the start to be portable and adaptable, with multiple "personalities" sitting on top of it e.g. a Unix personality, an OS/2 personality (IIRC there were even plans for a NeXT personality as well as a few others, though those never happened), etc. The concept was fairly new at the time, hence the name New Technology. NT 3.x included a 16-bit OS/2 "personality" and a basic POSIX "personality" both to ease migration to the new platform, but also to showcase NT's capabilities.
I'm an OS/2 fanboy turned Linux fanboy, and I've never seen the NT sourcecode, but from what I've read the NT kernel itself is a marvel of software engineering. It's the userland crap piled on it that makes Windows the lumbering beast we all love to hate.
For unbundled PC's, I forsee a glorified sticky note on the front of the computer saying "To begin using your computer, insert this disk (pointing to picture of installation disk)" You put in the disk, boot it, and if the fixed disk is blank, the system asks no questions beyond the obligatory "This will install (OS of choice). OK?". 25 minutes later, you've got Windows, Ubuntu, PCLinuxOS, DesktopBSD, FreeDOS, eComStation or whatever OS you picked. Each OS installation disk would look essentially the same, just with the OS of choice's name and logo as a secondary feature on the artwork.
If the install disk determines there is data on the fixed disk, it would provide a warning about backing up data, formats make data go bye bye, etc, possibly even offering to back existing data up to an external drive, if present.
I think the insert CD and wait part is easy enough for anybody. It would be the salesperson or website's job to help the customer select the best OS for their needs. The sticky wicket there would be to ensure that no stores are being given kickbacks to push any specific OS over the others.
That meeting just reinforced my opinion that voting is pointless. There were 30 or so people who implored the commitee and commissioners not to amend the initiative, and 5 people ask them to amend it, 3 of which were law enforcement, one man was very, very elderly, and one man who actually claimed that "it was much harder for me to get off pot than marijuana."
The county prosecutor opened the meeting by telling us that we did not understand the initiative, to which many of us, myself included, assured him that we read the initiative in its entirety, and did understand it. When everybody was done speaking, he came back up and told us that he disagreed with us, and that we still did not understand the initiative. In addition, he showed us a map showing how the votes were distributed, and told us that since most of the votes were centered around the "metropolitan" area of Missoula, and not so much in the surrounding areas of the county, that it was not fair to voters to have this initiative.
I really enjoy living in Missoula for a number of reasons, but the local government is not one of them.
For the record, I did vote, and will continue to, regardless of my opinion that voting is purely symbolic.
I may be in the minority, but I download music sort of as a "test drive" before I spend my money on the album. there are many bands i would not have heard of, and consequentially purchased their albums were it not for filesharing.
Especially with indie artists who don't get much radio/tv coverage, it would seem that filesharing really should help boost sales. Were it not for gnutella, I would never have even heard of bands like Califone, 764-HERO, Holopaw, Black Heart Procession, Ugly Casanova, Brent Arnold, Process of a Still Life, and many others, whos albums I went out and bought after "stealing" their music and costing them all that revenue.
Record labels and their artists have made far more money off of me since I discovered filesharing.
Though to be fair, I don't think most indie bands are signed with labels associated with RIAA.
having worked tech support for a somewhat major ISP, i can understand why they have the automated systems.
Even with 14 or 15 call centers, each with several hundred support agents, we often had 100+ calls in queue. If it weren't for the automated menu system, the company would have had to hire hundreds or perhaps even a couple thousand operators to direct calls to the correct support departments. Not only would that cost a lot of extra and arguably unnecessary money, it would have created problems as aggrivated customers take their rage out on the operator, or expect them to fix their problem, instead of waiting in line for a trained support person.
Granted, if they just provided decent service and products in the first place, they wouldn't have constantly had massive amounts of tech calls, but that's a whole other story...:-)
This might be a relatively small step, but give them time.
Check out OS/2's history for some insight as to why Linux isn't as prevalent on pre-built machines as one might like.
Back in '94, OS/2 Warp 3.0 came out, fully 32-bit, with memory protection, *real* pre-emptive multitasking, support for long file names, full internet kit and basic office suite bundled, and a full implementation of Win3.1 embedded that ran nearly all win16 and win32s programs - in effect, everything Win95 promised, plus some extras - IBM had nearly persuaded 4 major OEM's (Compaq, Gateway2000, PacBell, and HP I believe, but could be mistaken) to preload OS/2 in a dual-boot setup, giving customers a voucher for a free upgrade to Win95 when, if ever, it finally came out. M$ threw a fit and threatened the aforementioned OEM's with making Win95 not install on their brands of machine if they did so. As it was, M$ charged IBM $45 a copy for Windows, compared with $9 for Compaq, telling IBM "of course we can't give you the same price for Windows as Compaq - they don't make a competing product"
The fact that they're even publicly supporting another OS is a bigger step than I think most realize. Give them time - chances are they're testing the waters to see if a)it's feasible to support Linux on a large scale, and b) they can get get away with it in the face of M$.
Slashdot Mirror
Reasonable and prudent meant people weren't trying to go 70 mph over a mountain pass in the winter. It also meant I could go 110 mph on a sunny day on an empty stretch of road if it and my vehicle were in good shape.
It was not "NO SPEED LIMITS" it was "reasonable and prudent". This has some benefits most don't consider, primarily in that with no posted speed limit, people don't feel compelled to go that speed when conditions do not permit. Montana has hundreds of miles of twisty, narrow roads that are poorly maintained and very dangerous when icy, which in some parts can be 8 months out of the year. If you were going 100 mph on a road in a shitbox car and clearly not in full control of the vehicle you were pulled over and the fine was enormous. "Reasonable and Prudent" was much safer than a flat 85 MPH.
It's not only running on 64-bit systems. All *new* systems built will have to be 64-bit in order to get the sticker.
The 32-bit version of Windows 7 exists for older systems that will run 7, but were built for a previous version of Windows.
Cell phone technology is still new, and the capabilities are still being learned.
This is true, and cell providers still haven't standardized even by region, let alone provider, how to send caller information to 911 dispatch stations. Every time a client of mine decides to deploy PhaseII at their center, programming has to come up with a new workaround for whatever weird quirk their local providers have with their service.
On the other hand, getting specifications and parameters from the telcos is like pulling teeth, even when it's for 911 call centers, so 3/4's of the time we end up having to figure out what's different on our own. Verizon definitely has the most quirky rebid setup of any of the providers we deal with.
For Exchange support, use Evolution. Photoshop, InDesign and Illustrator (CS2 at least, CS3 support is still being perfected) all work well in Wine. You can install IE 6 in Linux to run ActiveX if necessary, and there are firefox plug-ins to implement ActiveX as well. OpenOffice.org doesn't support VBA macros deliberately as they are a huge security risk. OxygenOffice, based on OpenOffice.org, does support them. As far as group policy updating, you've clearly never used APT.
Old meme is old. GNU/Linux is quite competent and capable in a Windows world.
On topic, I upgraded to Intrepid Ibex beta two weeks ago. The speed increase is palpable, and Hardy Heron was still much faster than XP, while being easier on the hardware (In XP and Vista, my CPU fan just runs constantly. In Linux, it only runs when I've been compiling a program for 15+ minutes).
To be fair, Firefox does not use the GPL. They use the Mozilla Public License. The GPL is irrelevant to this discussion.
Is the OS/2 link a hard link?
No, it's not a file system object at all. The Workplace Shell keeps all "shadows" in its ini file. Shadows are visible to neither the command line nor non WPS-aware apps.
Since the WPS is almost always running, it's not an issue, but if you do what he says without the WPS running (e.g. you edit config.sys to force OS/2 to use CMD.EXE as the user environment), the shadow will not be updated. It will just show a broken link icon. While the WPS is running, it pays attention to what's happening in the command line, and will update shadows as necessary.
An interesting thing I found while tooling around with an OS/2 ini editor was that all files have a filename that users use, and then a hex string that the system uses, separate from the Extended Attributes. I suspect this is why you can relocate an installed program to another drive, and it will continue to work. The WPS simply points to the static hex value of each file, and the FS redirects to the filename.
sorry, mis-modded you and apparently this is the only way to undo it...
Accidentally modded your post "redundant", so I'm replying with this useless comment to undo my moderation, since the new moderation system does not allow for mistakes.
Cheers.
Try thinking in bytes instead of stacks of things.
Think how much crap you can fit in one megabyte of space, vs one gigabyte. To me anyway, it's a lot more quantifiable than a room full of pennies, which just looks like a room full of pennies, and does not equate to any sort of tangible value. It's probably why companies stopped comparing storage capacities of computers to stacks of paper in the early 80's. After you got past a 50 foot stack of paper, it kinda became meaningless.
I've got a ThinkPad 360CE that still runs like a top, minus a dead battery. :) I just have to have it plugged in.
Built in 1994, 486 DX-2 50Mhz, 20 megs RAM, 500 meg hard drive, 2.88 meg floppy, 9" SVGA LCD.
I stopped using it as my primary laptop back in 2000, but it's still my testbed for old software
That machine has seen a lot of abuse. I got it when I was 13, and it got me through jr. high and high school.
The old ThinkPads were neat machines. Really innovative for the time, with features like a GUI bios (the pointer is a hummingbird), and on some machines a fold out "butterfly" keyboard. They're also indestructable.
Fair enough, though XP really was enough of an improvement over 98se to stand on its own merit, PlaySkool interface notwithstanding. It didn't need Me to make it seem that much better.
NT-OS/2 actually.
The way I understand it, the progression is as follows:
1.x (on DOS kernel) -> 1.01, 1.02, 1.03, 1.04
2.x (on DOS kernel) -> 2.03, 2.1 (Windows/286), 2.11 (Windows/386)
3.x (on DOS kernel) -> 3.0, 3.1, WFW 3.1, 3.11, WFW 3.11
3.x (new kernel, based on code originally slated to be OS/2 rewrite - known internally as NT-OS/2 for much of it's life, later simply WindowsNT) -> 3.1, 3.5, 3.51
4.x (on DOS kernel) -> 4.0 (Windows95), 4.1 (Windows98), 4.9 (WindowsME)
4.x (NT kernel) -> 4.0
5.x (NT kernel) -> 5.0 (Windows2000) 5.1 (WindowsXP)
6.x (NT kernel) -> Vista
7.x (presumably NT kernel) -> Windows7 (whatever it's final name is)
The story of Me is semi-interesting (actually not so much interesting as it is tedious). Basically, MS had intended NT 5.0 to be what XP actually became; they planned on merging the consumer and business platforms to a unified (NT) codebase (codenamed Neptune). NT 5.0's codebase was not finished with time enough to add all the features consumers needed, like compatability with 4.x and 3.x applications. The reason for naming NT 5.0 Windows2000 was to create a clear naming scheme for home users to upgrade, but by the time it became clear that 2000 would not be for home users, the name had already caught on. To prevent confusion, they revamped 98, adding Windows2000's icon set and interface enhancements, as well as a few odds and ends such as UPnP, to call it Millenium Edition, or Me.
Me really should never have existed, and it was quickly slapped together to avoid a marketing catastrophe. Unfortunately for Microsoft, Me is their Pinto. OTOH, it made XP that much more appealing.
Side note: NT starting at version 3 was a multi-reason decision, slightly influenced by it's relationship to OS/2, but much more due to marketing. NT started at version 3.1 because that was the version Windows was currently sitting at. Also, MS didn't want customers to think NT was less mature than OS/2 (then at version 2.1). NT got its name from the fact that they totally rewrote the OS/2 kernel, opting for a microkernel that was designed from the start to be portable and adaptable, with multiple "personalities" sitting on top of it e.g. a Unix personality, an OS/2 personality (IIRC there were even plans for a NeXT personality as well as a few others, though those never happened), etc. The concept was fairly new at the time, hence the name New Technology. NT 3.x included a 16-bit OS/2 "personality" and a basic POSIX "personality" both to ease migration to the new platform, but also to showcase NT's capabilities.
I'm an OS/2 fanboy turned Linux fanboy, and I've never seen the NT sourcecode, but from what I've read the NT kernel itself is a marvel of software engineering. It's the userland crap piled on it that makes Windows the lumbering beast we all love to hate.
Really guys, it doesn't have to be that hard.
For unbundled PC's, I forsee a glorified sticky note on the front of the computer saying "To begin using your computer, insert this disk (pointing to picture of installation disk)" You put in the disk, boot it, and if the fixed disk is blank, the system asks no questions beyond the obligatory "This will install (OS of choice). OK?". 25 minutes later, you've got Windows, Ubuntu, PCLinuxOS, DesktopBSD, FreeDOS, eComStation or whatever OS you picked. Each OS installation disk would look essentially the same, just with the OS of choice's name and logo as a secondary feature on the artwork.
If the install disk determines there is data on the fixed disk, it would provide a warning about backing up data, formats make data go bye bye, etc, possibly even offering to back existing data up to an external drive, if present.
I think the insert CD and wait part is easy enough for anybody. It would be the salesperson or website's job to help the customer select the best OS for their needs. The sticky wicket there would be to ensure that no stores are being given kickbacks to push any specific OS over the others.
reason enough?
The county prosecutor opened the meeting by telling us that we did not understand the initiative, to which many of us, myself included, assured him that we read the initiative in its entirety, and did understand it. When everybody was done speaking, he came back up and told us that he disagreed with us, and that we still did not understand the initiative. In addition, he showed us a map showing how the votes were distributed, and told us that since most of the votes were centered around the "metropolitan" area of Missoula, and not so much in the surrounding areas of the county, that it was not fair to voters to have this initiative.
I really enjoy living in Missoula for a number of reasons, but the local government is not one of them.
For the record, I did vote, and will continue to, regardless of my opinion that voting is purely symbolic.
I may be in the minority, but I download music sort of as a "test drive" before I spend my money on the album. there are many bands i would not have heard of, and consequentially purchased their albums were it not for filesharing. Especially with indie artists who don't get much radio/tv coverage, it would seem that filesharing really should help boost sales. Were it not for gnutella, I would never have even heard of bands like Califone, 764-HERO, Holopaw, Black Heart Procession, Ugly Casanova, Brent Arnold, Process of a Still Life, and many others, whos albums I went out and bought after "stealing" their music and costing them all that revenue. Record labels and their artists have made far more money off of me since I discovered filesharing. Though to be fair, I don't think most indie bands are signed with labels associated with RIAA.
having worked tech support for a somewhat major ISP, i can understand why they have the automated systems. Even with 14 or 15 call centers, each with several hundred support agents, we often had 100+ calls in queue. If it weren't for the automated menu system, the company would have had to hire hundreds or perhaps even a couple thousand operators to direct calls to the correct support departments. Not only would that cost a lot of extra and arguably unnecessary money, it would have created problems as aggrivated customers take their rage out on the operator, or expect them to fix their problem, instead of waiting in line for a trained support person. Granted, if they just provided decent service and products in the first place, they wouldn't have constantly had massive amounts of tech calls, but that's a whole other story... :-)
This might be a relatively small step, but give them time.
Check out OS/2's history for some insight as to why Linux isn't as prevalent on pre-built machines as one might like.
Back in '94, OS/2 Warp 3.0 came out, fully 32-bit, with memory protection, *real* pre-emptive multitasking, support for long file names, full internet kit and basic office suite bundled, and a full implementation of Win3.1 embedded that ran nearly all win16 and win32s programs - in effect, everything Win95 promised, plus some extras - IBM had nearly persuaded 4 major OEM's (Compaq, Gateway2000, PacBell, and HP I believe, but could be mistaken) to preload OS/2 in a dual-boot setup, giving customers a voucher for a free upgrade to Win95 when, if ever, it finally came out. M$ threw a fit and threatened the aforementioned OEM's with making Win95 not install on their brands of machine if they did so. As it was, M$ charged IBM $45 a copy for Windows, compared with $9 for Compaq, telling IBM "of course we can't give you the same price for Windows as Compaq - they don't make a competing product"
The fact that they're even publicly supporting another OS is a bigger step than I think most realize. Give them time - chances are they're testing the waters to see if a)it's feasible to support Linux on a large scale, and b) they can get get away with it in the face of M$.