Patrick Elliott wrote:
> its either something like .NET, which a lot of people don't 
> want at all,

There's a lot of people who don't want a computer at all. Hence, OSS is 
worthless.

> or trust, *or* someone goes, "Gee, doesn't GFBunk (or some 
> similarly weirdly named thing) already do that on such an such OS?"

I see Linux copying a lot of stuff that MS does on Linux file systems, for 
example. When Linux adds something like the ability to watch for changes to 
the file system or the ability to take a snapshot of the file system without 
disrupting operations, I don't see too many people complaining "Hey, doesn't 
Microsoft do that already?"  But if Microsoft adds virtual desktops, I can 
guarantee people will croon that's been in Linux for years.

You're getting caught by confirmation bias here, methinks. Any small 
improvement is going to be seen as a small incremental improvement just to 
make money on upgrades, or sufficiently close to what someone else already 
did that you can dismiss it. If they do something large and new, you say "I 
don't trust Microsoft and they're the only ones I can get this from, so it 
isn't valuable." (While leaving off the "to me" you should be putting at the 
end, mind.)  So, no, of course you don't think they've done anything new.

The list of new things they've done recently is widely available, so I won't 
bother going thru it.

> Hmm. Well there is that. But, the point is "competing", not "every", 
> so... Sure they will just pick which ever one has the most market share 
> at the time, which would be... Hmm... lol

That's my point. The inclusion of IE isn't keeping anyone from buying 
Firefox or Safari.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Ouch ouch ouch!"
   "What's wrong? Noodles too hot?"
   "No, I have Chopstick Tunnel Syndrome."

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:
> Invisible wrote:
>> M$ has somehow succeeded in convincing people that it is somehow 
>> "normal" for computers to not work correctly.
> 
> Not really. Personal computers never worked consistently right. 
> Mainframes, yes, but not micros or PCs.  (And by PC, I mean everything 
> from TRS-80 to Apple ][ to Commodore PET to ...)

Or rather, you mean "any computer that hasn't really worked right"? :-P

Post a reply to this message

Invisible wrote:
> Darren New wrote:
>> Invisible wrote:
>>> M$ has somehow succeeded in convincing people that it is somehow 
>>> "normal" for computers to not work correctly.
>>
>> Not really. Personal computers never worked consistently right. 
>> Mainframes, yes, but not micros or PCs.  (And by PC, I mean everything 
>> from TRS-80 to Apple ][ to Commodore PET to ...)
> 
> Or rather, you mean "any computer that hasn't really worked right"? :-P

BTW, I'm not sure where Microsoft comes into this, except as being the first 
popular OS that ran on hardware they didn't make themselves. When your PSU 
is flakey and it makes your video card crash your video card driver with 
spurious interrupts, somehow it's Microsoft that gets blamed.

As someone who drove college cars in college, it didn't take Microsoft to 
convince me that if you have POS hardware, you're going to spend most 
weekends underneath it fixing it. :-)

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Ouch ouch ouch!"
   "What's wrong? Noodles too hot?"
   "No, I have Chopstick Tunnel Syndrome."

Post a reply to this message

nemesis wrote:
> Nicolas Alvarez escreveu:
>>
>> As someone who runs Linux on his desktop... I agree.

I might second this, but I have no idea where KDE and Gnome are going
right now.

> 
> BTW, both latest Gnome and KDE 4 are pure finesse when compared to the
> geeky desktop environments I had to cope with in the old days.  Anyone
> remembers when Gnome used to come with Lispy Sawfish and Xeyes? ;)

Both KDE and Gnome have always (when I've tested them, haven't for a
while now) been awful compared to light, fast, capable and geeky
Afterstep. They are just too Explorer -like with start-bars etc (which
is probably a good thing from a basic user's eye)

> They also hold up quite well when compared to Vista.  Aqua is another
> level, though...

Aqua is the one that OSX uses, right? It's still pretty far narrowed
down to Apple hardware and the short moments I've had with it haven't
been extra pleasant, but it could be good when you get used to it (I
just don't know, the first contacts just haven't been wonderous).

-Aero

Post a reply to this message

nemesis wrote:
> 
> FlashBlock?!  My sister won't even touch Firefox!  Anytime I'm at my
> parent's and leave the computer for others to use -- it's a single
> Windows passwordless session (because it's "easy") -- I leave Firefox
> open with a clean new tab.  First thing she does is close Firefox and
> click on the old blue e.  It's like dog conditioning, I guess, because
> she seems to not even realize it's a web browser sitting just before her...

Have you ever tried, what happens if you change the Big ol' E to start
Firefox? :)

-Aero

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:
> The list of new things they've done recently is widely available, so I 
> won't bother going thru it.
> 
Seen the lists, seen the rebuttals. Still not impressed. Especially when 
some of them are things like "Added a mess of new features to DirectX", 
which would be available without it, except that they insisted you "had 
to" make them only work in DirectX. A lot of the time, the problem with 
OpenGL isn't that it "can't" do something, its that the hardware doesn't 
let it use those features. The other issue is a correlary, "If you can't 
use those features, it takes longer to replicate them the hard way, than 
if it could just "use" them in the first place.

And again. I have "never" seen any case, personally, where someone said, 
"Ooh! MS is doing that with their OS? Better put it in Linux!" Not 
unless it is something in the class of user interfaces, and those tend 
to be used to "hide" things you don't want people mucking with, as much 
as making it easier to use. Its.. taking a 1940's engine, slapping a 
2009 body on it, applying a fancy new kind of paint, then saying, "Look, 
look! Isn't the new version great, compared to that ugly hack over 
their?", while the people you are pointing at have a brand spanking new 
turbo charged, fuel efficient, bio-diesel, electronic fuel injected, 
monster, sitting in a basic frame and a cheap plastic shell. Only... 
That is rapidly changing, and one side still has the better "engine", no 
matter how many gadgets the other one glues onto theirs, without 
fundamentally changing it.

Windows borrows, Linux evolves. The only time it ever seems to work the 
other way around is when MS decides that Windows needs to poison the 
well, and Linux has to adapt by developing resistance to the poison, 
like all the attempts made over the years by MS to "obfuscate" 
protocols, with the clear, and often within internal documents, intent, 
of sabotaging compatibility.

The problem isn't Windows per-say. Its the entire philosophy behind it, 
and the compromises made to a) rush it out the door all the time, or b) 
undermine others, just to get a slight edge over everyone else. Its 
better to work towards a fully usable solution, not keep tacking on half 
assed ones, the way they end up doing it, from their "new" security 
model, which just causes people like me, who "despise" storing data on 
the same partition as the OS, to pull our hair out, to defraggers that 
still, to this day, don't have the common sense to defrag the "unused" 
space, or optimize program access (never mind all the third parties that 
figured that one out as far back as Win3.11), to.. an endless list.

FOSS has an excuse for this, they don't have thousands of developers 
working 24/7 on *one* project, trying to make it bloody work right. 
MS... doesn't. Their goal is just to make things look impressive, and do 
enough to sell the product. Its not until it becomes obvious that they 
have problems, or someone else is biting their ankles, or something 
never did work, and enough people are annoyed, that they even "attempt" 
to fix it.

-- 
void main () {
   If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

<A HREF='http://www.daz3d.com/index.php?refid=16130551'>Get 3D Models, 
3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:
>
> I see Linux copying a lot of stuff that MS does on Linux file systems,
> for example. When Linux adds something like the ability to watch for
> changes to the file system or the ability to take a snapshot of the file
> system without disrupting operations, I don't see too many people
> complaining "Hey, doesn't Microsoft do that already?"  

Is there such thing from MS? I know that (at least some) storage systems
can do that and VMWare ESX can do that, but is there implementation from
MS (possibly with HyperV?)?

> But if Microsoft
> adds virtual desktops, I can guarantee people will croon that's been in
> Linux for years.

I'll shout "Finally" rather than croon. One thing I've been missing on
Windows since the 90's.

-Aero

Post a reply to this message

Patrick Elliott wrote:
>
> MS... doesn't. Their goal is just to make things look impressive, and do
> enough to sell the product. Its not until it becomes obvious that they
> 

Part of this has been disgussed here before - MS lives by selling
software (and hardware) and most of computer users don't have a clue of
what's happening under the bonnet, so they have to do (also) visual
changes (which aren't always improvements) to make people see a
difference to older system. Hence one goal automatically is to make
things look impressive.

-Aero

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:
> BTW, I'm not sure where Microsoft comes into this, except as being the 
> first popular OS that ran on hardware they didn't make themselves. When 
> your PSU is flakey and it makes your video card crash your video card 
> driver with spurious interrupts, somehow it's Microsoft that gets blamed.
> 
> As someone who drove college cars in college, it didn't take Microsoft 
> to convince me that if you have POS hardware, you're going to spend most 
> weekends underneath it fixing it. :-)

Yeah, that's right. Because a faulty power supply *completely explains* 
why Word crashes when you open certain documents. Oh, wait... actually 
it doesn't. :-P

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

Post a reply to this message

Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> Yeah, that's right. Because a faulty power supply *completely explains* 
> why Word crashes when you open certain documents. Oh, wait... actually 
> it doesn't. :-P

I didn't say that.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   "Ouch ouch ouch!"
   "What's wrong? Noodles too hot?"
   "No, I have Chopstick Tunnel Syndrome."

Post a reply to this message