On Tue, 12 Feb 2008 20:01:49 +0000, Orchid XP v7 wrote:

> I was thinking more "we'll give you this big bulk discount on a bunch of
> Windows CDs, but only if you sign this agreement not to offer any other
> OS"...

That's called "anticompetitive behaviour" and something that Microsoft 
used to do with their OEM agreements, but they've been told the behave 
themselves, and at least on that front, they are.

Jim

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Nicolas Alvarez wrote:
> Darren New escribió:
>>> The hardware hasn't been on sale for a while now, AFAIK. But then, 
>>> would *you* buy a "personal computer" powered by a 20 MHz 68030 with 
>>> 2 MB RAM?
>>
>> Maybe. Is the OLPC any more powerful?
>>
> 
> 433 MHz, 256 MB of RAM, 1GB of Flash memory as storage.

Wow. How times have changed.

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     On what day did God create the body thetans?

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nemesis wrote:
> Darren New wrote:
>> And no, it's not just something doing a global grab or something. 
>> Cursor locks up, and it doesn't answer pings.
> 
> sorry to hear that.  Perhaps swap got full?...

I wouldn't think so, unless there's something running I don't know about 
that just chugs memory. I have the little barchart in the bottom and I 
don't ever see the swap color getting used, either. I have like 2G RAM 
and 2.5G swap, so ... probably not.

And I'd certainly hope Linux wouldn't stop responding to pings just 
because swap got exhausted.

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     On what day did God create the body thetans?

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Darren New escribió:
> Nicolas Alvarez wrote:
>> Darren New escribió:
>>>> The hardware hasn't been on sale for a while now, AFAIK. But then, 
>>>> would *you* buy a "personal computer" powered by a 20 MHz 68030 with 
>>>> 2 MB RAM?
>>>
>>> Maybe. Is the OLPC any more powerful?
>>>
>>
>> 433 MHz, 256 MB of RAM, 1GB of Flash memory as storage.
> 
> Wow. How times have changed.
> 

And most of the user interface and programs are made in Python.

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Darren New wrote:
> nemesis wrote:
>> no, I'm simply saying that those "multiple operating systems" are 
>> using the same old code from the same single company to handle old 
>> apps, so that doesn't count as multiple operating systems.
> 
> Well, no, they're not. That's just factually incorrect. If that was the 
> case, DOS programs couldn't write to files on NTFS partitions or access 
> network shares,

once the NTFS partitions or network shares are "mounted", I guess they 
just made it available to the DOS IO calls as local files in DOS 
"standard file format".  Little extensions and adjustments to let the 
old dog keep moving.

> nor would software that writes directly to the screen 
> work inside a window.

why not?  videogame emulators have long been tricking console software 
dumps into thinking a rectangular area in a windowing system is actually 
the TV screen...

> I.e., you've pushed off the work of porting your stuff to the author of 
> the interpreter.

so what?  old DOS apps running on Windows also did that.

Your code is portable and you don't have to recompile nor compile the 
runtime for yourself.  Are people never satisfied?

> Yet "mono" for some reason is "proprietary Microsoft code"?

besides the untested IP aspect that can give M$ weapons for spreading 
"Linux uses our IP" FUD by distorting some truth, the real horrendous 
aspect of mono is that it gets people hooked on yet another M$ dependent 
  technology that'll never run as well on the real thing and that is 
always one step behind the original.

> That doesn't make it "cross-platform".

but it is:  I can use from Windows at work, Linux at home, whatever...

> Who put the word "visual" in there? You *are* aware that MS has been 
> making BASIC interpreters since like Atari 800 days, right?

yes, but when you come up with Basic and M$, today, it's all about VB. 
and besides, old M$ bas files are not cross-platform either.

>>> Except they don't provide executables.
>> They sure do.  And they are truly cross-platform.
> 
> Python compiles down to an executable I can run on both Windows and 
> Linux without installing a Python interpreter? Cool.

I thought you saying the companies did not provide executables.

>>> I agree that open source software is probably a better way to do 
>>> stuff, as long as you aren't worried about making a living at it.
>>
>> the folks at RedHat or Novell seem to be doing fine.
> 
> Yeah, much much better than Microsoft.

they don't have a monopoly in their hands to rip off their userbase.

>>  But the source is there 
> 
> ... if you don't mind giving it away ...

we're talking about open-source software here, aren't we?

> Yep. In other words, recompile.  As opposed to Microsoft, which manages 
> to do it without recompiling and without a "cross-platform language".

they recompiled their own DOS runtimes and APIs and introduced 
"middlemen" so as to make them see network shares or windows as 
traditional resources.

Why are you so obsessed with recompilations when it's not even any 
trouble for you as a user?

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Orchid XP v7 wrote:
> I was thinking more "we'll give you this big bulk discount on a bunch of 
> Windows CDs, but only if you sign this agreement not to offer any other 
> OS"...

Actually, that wasn't the deal. The deal was "we'll give you a volume 
discount if you pay MS for a copy of Windows on every machine you sell." 
  They could offer other OSes too, but they'd still have to pay for 
Windows on that machine.  So MS could track how much they were owed by 
how many machines were sold.

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     On what day did God create the body thetans?

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On Tue, 12 Feb 2008 14:40:51 -0800, Darren New wrote:

> Actually, that wasn't the deal. The deal was "we'll give you a volume
> discount if you pay MS for a copy of Windows on every machine you sell."

Well, the original OEM agreements included verbiage that said that they 
would not only pay for a license for each machine sold, but that Windows 
would be the installed OS on that machine.

Some of the agreements also included verbiage that forbade the 
installation of another OS even as a dual-boot option.

Jim

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nemesis wrote:
> Darren New wrote:
>> nemesis wrote:
>>> no, I'm simply saying that those "multiple operating systems" are 
>>> using the same old code from the same single company to handle old 
>>> apps, so that doesn't count as multiple operating systems.
>>
>> Well, no, they're not. That's just factually incorrect. If that was 
>> the case, DOS programs couldn't write to files on NTFS partitions or 
>> access network shares,
> 
> once the NTFS partitions or network shares are "mounted", I guess they 
> just made it available to the DOS IO calls as local files in DOS 
> "standard file format".  Little extensions and adjustments to let the 
> old dog keep moving.

Yes. It's called "compatibility". Honestly, think about it. You have 
DOS, which was written before NTFS, which managed the file system on the 
disk. Indeed, that's pretty much the only thing it did.

Now you have a completely different file system that's incompatible with 
DOS. What parts of DOS are you reusing?

>> nor would software that writes directly to the screen work inside a 
>> window.
> 
> why not?

What part of DOS was responsible for making programs that wrote directly 
to screen memory instead write into a window?

Have you forgotten what we're discussing at this point?

>  videogame emulators have long been tricking console software 
> dumps into thinking a rectangular area in a windowing system is actually 
> the TV screen...

It's called a "genlock". While most video cards have genlocks on them 
these days (also called "overlays"), that isn't how Windows does it.

>> I.e., you've pushed off the work of porting your stuff to the author 
>> of the interpreter.
> 
> so what?  old DOS apps running on Windows also did that.

I don't think you are keeping track of what we're discussing. Because 
this rejoinder makes no sense to me.

> Your code is portable and you don't have to recompile nor compile the 
> runtime for yourself.  Are people never satisfied?

Quite satisifed, yes. What's wrong with VMWare, again?

>> Yet "mono" for some reason is "proprietary Microsoft code"?
> 
> besides the untested IP aspect that can give M$ weapons for spreading 
> "Linux uses our IP" FUD by distorting some truth, the real horrendous 
> aspect of mono is that it gets people hooked on yet another M$ dependent 
>  technology that'll never run as well on the real thing and that is 
> always one step behind the original.

Hmmmm... Like, say, Java?

>> That doesn't make it "cross-platform".
> but it is:  I can use from Windows at work, Linux at home, whatever...

I'm not sure you and I are speaking about the same thing.

>>>> Except they don't provide executables.
>>> They sure do.  And they are truly cross-platform.
>>
>> Python compiles down to an executable I can run on both Windows and 
>> Linux without installing a Python interpreter? Cool.
> 
> I thought you saying the companies did not provide executables.

No. We're talking about Windows providing backward compatibility for 
compiled executables on multiple operating systems. Why would I be 
talking about recompiling python interpreters?

>>>  But the source is there 
>> ... if you don't mind giving it away ...
> we're talking about open-source software here, aren't we?

Not exclusively. The advantage that MS has over its competitors is they 
managed to get executables that are *NOT* open source to run on multiple 
operating systems over the years. *That* is a big part of why they have 
a monopoly.

>> Yep. In other words, recompile.  As opposed to Microsoft, which 
>> manages to do it without recompiling and without a "cross-platform 
>> language".
> 
> they recompiled their own DOS runtimes and APIs and introduced 
> "middlemen" so as to make them see network shares or windows as 
> traditional resources.

And you know this ... how?  What makes you think there's any significant 
amount of DOS code left in XP?

> Why are you so obsessed with recompilations when it's not even any 
> trouble for you as a user?

Because that's what we're talking about - closed-source commercial 
for-fee executables running on multiple OSes.

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     On what day did God create the body thetans?

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Jim Henderson wrote:
> Some of the agreements also included verbiage that forbade the 
> installation of another OS even as a dual-boot option.

I must have missed that part of the evidence. :-) Yeah, that's pretty nasty.

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     On what day did God create the body thetans?

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Darren New wrote:
> Have you forgotten what we're discussing at this point?

look at the size of this goddamn thread, man!  I don't even know who am 
I anymore... I've been into this all day long!  I'm on vacation and 
should be away from computers, perhaps on a trip on something.

I've opened a beer and so, cheers!

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nemesis escribió:
> Darren New wrote:
>> Have you forgotten what we're discussing at this point?
> 
> look at the size of this goddamn thread, man! 

241 posts to be exact (242 with this one). At least it got long and not 
deep. Thunderbird makes it hard to see posts when they get too high in 
the thread nesting...

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nemesis wrote:
> I've opened a beer and so, cheers!

And same to you!  I'm off to see family on the other coast in a couple 
hours. Enjoy your vacation! :-)

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     On what day did God create the body thetans?

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And lo on Tue, 12 Feb 2008 19:12:37 -0000, Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom>  
did spake, saying:

> Phil Cook wrote:
>> and yet prior to Windows 95 there were quite the number of competing  
>> OSs.
>
> Afterwards, too. Just not on the same hardware. And not really offering  
> a whole lot more.

True, but I think that period was really the turning point.

>>> Apple requires you to buy new hardware, so it's not purely a software  
>>> decision.
>>  Yet everyone loves their monopolistic ways :-)
>
> And the software is subsidized by the hardware, which *would* be  
> monopolistic if Apple split into two companies.

At least now it's possible to install non-Apple software on an Apple with  
greater ease.

> And it *still* costs roughly the same for Apple software as MS software,  
> in spite of the subsidy.

'Companies charge what the market will bear' so often misunderstood

-- 
Phil Cook

--
I once tried to be apathetic, but I just couldn't be bothered
http://flipc.blogspot.com

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>> I was programming in Pascal - why?
>
> Fair enough. Pascal can be fairly safe if you're not using too many 
> dynamic structures.

This is a good point - on my Acorn, one typo in assembler, or in basic when 
you're playing about with memory addresses (which usually you were when 
developing desktop applications) and you'd get the dreaded "Internal Error: 
Abort on data transfer" or such and be forced to *reset*.  Fortunately you 
need to work *really* hard to achieve the same on Windows :-)

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Orchid XP v7 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> Heh. Reminds me of my first attempt to use Perl for CGI. I tried to run 
> it, and it didn't work. After a while I gave up waiting and closed IE. I 
> did some more poking and prodding of the code before the lead tech came 
> over and said "hey, you've using up 100% CPU on the webserver".

  Web servers which are configured properly will automatically kill
any CGI process which is taking too long to terminate. Apparently
that one wasn't.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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>> And you guys are trying to convince me my mum could use Linux .... ha!
>
>  I wouldn't not recommend Linux for your mother. I would recommend you
> buy her a Mac mini.

Yes I heard good things about those from non-tech people, mainly via my 
sister who does graphics/arts stuff.  However, the mac mini is twice the 
price of the PC my mum has with XP, and she is happy with XP because she 
knows (roughly!) how to use it.  Maybe when she has some more money to 
spend, or some hardware breaks she will consider it.

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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> >   Now, try to google without an internet connection because you just
> > failed to install the driver necessary for the internet connection.

> Go over to the next machine and google it.

  It was the only computer at that home. The next computer accessible by
me was kilometers away.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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> Give you mom Ubuntu and she'll never ever touch a command-line, except for 
> running "pppoeconf" and providing ADSL login and password on installation.

She has a wireless router/modem that I set up for her downstairs - so it 
would just be a case of configuring the wireless USB stick to pick up an IP 
address with DHCP .... is that easy?

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Eero Ahonen <aer### [at] removethiszbxtnetinvalid> wrote:
> Vista's getting a lot of angry comments now and it hasn't got it's
> footprint out (yet). If MS broke backward compatibility totally now, how
> would you think Vista would be selling?

  I don't believe too many people would complain if Vista broke
compatibility with Windows 3.1 and DOS (which would be approximately
the same thing MacOS X has done).

  (OTOH, I don't really know if Vista actually has done that. I assume
it hasn't.)

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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>> [Last I heard - and I don't have any hard data for this - the guys you
>> named aren't exactly short of cash.]
> 
> They're not, but what does that have to do with hardware support?  Dell, 
> HP, IBM/Lenovo all sell machines with Linux pre-installed on them.  It 
> would see that this would be hard to do if hardware support "wasn't there 
> yet".

Well, if you decide exactly what hardware goes in, you can select only 
supported hardware. Easy. :-D

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

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Jim Henderson wrote:

>> It's still not [yet] as easy to use.
> 
> Wrong.

"Easy to use" is highly subjective.

>> Most hardware companies don't supply drivers for it, and refuse to hand
>> over the information required for anybody else to write those drivers.
> 
> Wrong; this used to be the case, but not any more.

It's improving, certainly. I don't think it's there yet though.

>> If you're into gaming, forget it. Almost no big developers target that
>> platform.
> 
> Hmmm, Unreal Tournament III runs on it natively, and Cedega does a very 
> nice job for non-Linux games.  Again, maybe 5 years ago this was the 
> case, but these days there are plenty of game developers writing to 
> Linux.  It's not on par with Windows, true.  But it's improved greatly.

Sure. It's changing. (Doesn't the latest Quake engine also run there?) 
My point is that it isn't there yet.

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

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Warp wrote:
> Eero Ahonen <aer### [at] removethiszbxtnetinvalid> wrote:
>> Vista's getting a lot of angry comments now and it hasn't got it's
>> footprint out (yet). If MS broke backward compatibility totally now, how
>> would you think Vista would be selling?
> 
>   I don't believe too many people would complain if Vista broke
> compatibility with Windows 3.1 and DOS (which would be approximately
> the same thing MacOS X has done).
> 
>   (OTOH, I don't really know if Vista actually has done that. I assume
> it hasn't.)

I hear that AMD64 [finally] breaks compatibility with certain really 
ancient x86 stuff. But I don't have any technical data on that...

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

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Orchid XP v7 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> Uh, dude, isn't the whole *point* of a Mac to get *away* from M$ 
> products? :-P

  The problem is that Microsoft is the Borg, and sometimes you just
can't avoid it. At least with MacOS X you can mostly stay away from
their OS, even if you are sometimes forced to use their office suite.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> It's funny - I go into the Apple stores around here and ask to see their 
> 64-bit machines, and the salesmen look at me like I have three heads or 
> something. You'd think someone selling something even as user-friendly 
> as Macs would know what that expression means.

  Well, the whole point of Macs is that you don't have to know how
it works. No wonder salesmen don't either. ;)

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp wrote:
> Orchid XP v7 <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
>> Uh, dude, isn't the whole *point* of a Mac to get *away* from M$ 
>> products? :-P
> 
>   The problem is that Microsoft is the Borg, and sometimes you just
> can't avoid it.

That's a familiar problem...

> At least with MacOS X you can mostly stay away from
> their OS, even if you are sometimes forced to use their office suite.

Heh. According to the guy I spoke to in the Apple shop [yes, while 
wondering around Leicester highstreet, I actually *found* an Apple 
shop!], Apple just haven't developed their own office suite yet. (Which 
is a pitty, because from what I've heard, if Apple did an office suite 
it would really 0wn...)

Presumably I can run OpenOffice instead though?

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

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> Yeah, but... A copy of Vista costs, what, £800?

Parallel world again!

From ebuyer, prices in GBP including VAT:

Home Basic 54
Home Premium 60
Business 82
Ultimate 106

That's for the 32 bit versions, the 64 bit versions are almost exactly the 
same price.

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> Well I don't live in America, do I? :-P

Didn't they take over Asda in the UK?

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scott wrote:
>> Yeah, but... A copy of Vista costs, what, £800?
> 
> Parallel world again!
> 
>  From ebuyer, prices in GBP including VAT:
> 
> Home Basic 54
> Home Premium 60
> Business 82
> Ultimate 106

Damn, that's come down a bit...

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

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scott wrote:
>> Well I don't live in America, do I? :-P
> 
> Didn't they take over Asda in the UK?

Er... hmm, that does sound vaguely familiar...

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

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>> Didn't they take over Asda in the UK?
>
> Er... hmm, that does sound vaguely familiar...

Yeh I hadn't heard of them until they did that - and then when I moved to 
Germany there was a Wal-Mart here, but then apparently they pulled out of 
Germany and it's a Real now.

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scott wrote:
>> Give you mom Ubuntu and she'll never ever touch a command-line, except 
>> for running "pppoeconf" and providing ADSL login and password on 
>> installation.
> 
> She has a wireless router/modem that I set up for her downstairs - so it 
> would just be a case of configuring the wireless USB stick to pick up an 
> IP address with DHCP .... is that easy?
> 
> 

I don't have a wireless router/modem to be sure, but you can test for 
yourself.  As I said, Ubuntu LiveCD (and most others) lets you try the 
whole distribution by running it from memory before/if you decide to 
install it to disk.  You can test its DHCP features, NTFS reading of 
partitions (no writing in the LiveCD) and whatever.

Just be warned that the whole install probably requires a connection so 
that it can download and update security packages from the repositories. 
  It's a good thing too to download a few other things, like proprietary 
media codecs.

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Invisible wrote:
> scott wrote:
>>> Yeah, but... A copy of Vista costs, what, £800?
>>
>> Parallel world again!
>>
>>  From ebuyer, prices in GBP including VAT:
>>
>> Home Basic 54
>> Home Premium 60
>> Business 82
>> Ultimate 106
> 
> Damn, that's come down a bit...
> 

those prices are thanks to Linux leveling the field. :)

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scott wrote:
>> Yeah, but... A copy of Vista costs, what, £800?
> 
> Parallel world again!
> 
>  From ebuyer, prices in GBP including VAT:
> 
> Home Basic 54
> Home Premium 60
> Business 82
> Ultimate 106
> 
> That's for the 32 bit versions, the 64 bit versions are almost exactly 
> the same price.
> 
> 

He must have been talking about the entire Adobe Creative Suite 3 Master 
Collection. US$2499

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And lo on Wed, 13 Feb 2008 10:49:23 -0000, scott <sco### [at] laptopcom> did  
spake, saying:

>> Well I don't live in America, do I? :-P
>
> Didn't they take over Asda in the UK?

Yes, but kept the name and didn't exactly shout about it on prime-time.

-- 
Phil Cook

--
I once tried to be apathetic, but I just couldn't be bothered
http://flipc.blogspot.com

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And lo on Wed, 13 Feb 2008 10:41:20 -0000, scott <sco### [at] laptopcom> did  
spake, saying:

>> Yeah, but... A copy of Vista costs, what, £800?
>
> Parallel world again!
>
> From ebuyer, prices in GBP including VAT:
>
> Home Basic 54
> Home Premium 60
> Business 82
> Ultimate 106
>
> That's for the 32 bit versions, the 64 bit versions are almost exactly  
> the same price.

 From Amazon the non-OEM non-upgrade 32-bit versions

Home Basic £175
Home Premium £214
Business £238
Ultimate £352

-- 
Phil Cook

--
I once tried to be apathetic, but I just couldn't be bothered
http://flipc.blogspot.com

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Invisible escribió:
> Presumably I can run OpenOffice instead though?

AFAIK, OpenOffice requires you to install X on Mac, like on any Unix. 
You could instead try NeoOffice, which runs "natively".

Post a reply to this message

And lo on Tue, 12 Feb 2008 19:06:36 -0000, Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> did  
spake, saying:

> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>> You're right. It isn't. FF is the number one sucker-up-of-useless-memory
>> -and-cycles on my machines.
>
>   Yes, everything not made by Microsoft is by definition bad, horrid,
> heavy, a memory-hog and a CPU-hog. Everything made by Microsoft is
> just perfect.
>
>   You must have a different version of Firefox, as mine is taking 0%
> of CPU time right now.

Let's put it this way for me I'm looking at a blank minimised Firefox  
(2.0.0.12) taking up 8 threads and a steady 3% of my CPU, I'm typing this  
in Opera (9.25.8887) with five tabs open and 5 threads; it blips between  
0.4% and 2% with the occasional blip up to 20% when it's picking up  
messages or switching tabs. According to AIDA Firefox is using 19316KB and  
Opera 15644KB.

-- 
Phil Cook

--
I once tried to be apathetic, but I just couldn't be bothered
http://flipc.blogspot.com

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Nicolas Alvarez wrote:
> Invisible escribió:
>> Presumably I can run OpenOffice instead though?
> 
> AFAIK, OpenOffice requires you to install X on Mac, like on any Unix.

Ah. Yes, I think I recall hearing this...

> You could instead try NeoOffice, which runs "natively".

Mmm, OK.

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

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"Phil Cook" <phi### [at] nospamrocainfreeservecouk> a écrit dans le message de 
news: op.t6gv6kh0c3xi7v@news.povray.org...
> Let's put it this way for me I'm looking at a blank minimised Firefox 
> (2.0.0.12) taking up 8 threads and a steady 3% of my CPU, I'm typing this 
> in Opera (9.25.8887) with five tabs open and 5 threads; it blips between 
> 0.4% and 2% with the occasional blip up to 20% when it's picking up 
> messages or switching tabs. According to AIDA Firefox is using 19316KB and 
> Opera 15644KB.

I was just reading a page explaining that some memory leaks in Firefox 1.5 
were actually a feature 
(http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/ben/archives/009749.html) when Firefox 
crashed. Now THAT's censorship :D

Or perhaps it didn't like my investigation about trends in Indonesia's 
poultry production, who knows.

G.


-- 
*****************************
http://www.oyonale.com
*****************************
- Graphic experiments
- POV-Ray, Cinema 4D and Poser computer images
- Posters

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Gilles Tran wrote:

> I was just reading a page explaining that some memory leaks in Firefox 1.5 
> were actually a feature 
> (http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/ben/archives/009749.html) when Firefox 
> crashed. Now THAT's censorship :D

Woah.

That's almost like the time I went to download Firefox at work. I typed 
in "www.mozilla.com", and IE displays this big sign that says

"Internet Explorer 7.0 - WE HAVE HEARD YOU!"

Damn that was scary! It turns out that the default configuration of 
Micro$oft ISA redirects the domain mozilla.com to Micro$oft's IE7 advert 
page. (Oh, that's cute!) I deleted the redirection and after that it 
worked fine. But DAMN... o_O

> Or perhaps it didn't like my investigation about trends in Indonesia's 
> poultry production, who knows.

Yeah, could be...

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

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"Invisible" <voi### [at] devnull> wrote in message
news:47b1cf6d$2@news.povray.org...

> Yeah, but... A copy of Vista costs, what, £800?

A good machine with Vista pre-installed on, maybe. The software along, for
R12000??? Hell, no one would have bought that.
You can get enterprise licences for less than that. My near-top range laptop
with Vista installed cost that.

Are you ever going to learn to look things up before making an ass of
yourself?
As said by someone wise "It is better to remain silent and be assumed to be
an idiot, than to open one's mouth and prove that one is"

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Invisible wrote:
> Nicolas Alvarez wrote:
>> You could instead try NeoOffice, which runs "natively".
> 
> Mmm, OK.

NeoOffice runs beautifully on my MacBook (800 quid when new, by the way; 
not the most expensive model you can buy but certainly more than 
sufficient for my needs). AFAIK NeoOffice is simply "OpenOffice for MacOSX".

I've also heard that the OSX version of MSOffice is better than the 
windows version (although there are some compatibility problems for 
those poor fools that insist on using the Windows Metafile as a picture 
format).

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> From Amazon the non-OEM non-upgrade 32-bit versions
>
> Home Basic £175
> Home Premium £214
> Business £238
> Ultimate £352

You'd be silly not to buy the OEM version though...  The main difference 
with the OEM version is that it is tied to the motherboard you first install 
it on.  Some say you can get around this by saying to the MS activiation 
person your old one died, but at worst it means you need to buy another OEM 
license when you get a new motherboard.  Given that the OEM license is 3-4 
times cheaper than the non-OEM version, it's a no-brainer.

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scott wrote:

> You'd be silly not to buy the OEM version though...  The main difference 
> with the OEM version is that it is tied to the motherboard you first 
> install it on.

Ah, is *that* what that actually means?

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

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And lo on Wed, 13 Feb 2008 16:17:58 -0000, scott <sco### [at] laptopcom> did  
spake, saying:

>> From Amazon the non-OEM non-upgrade 32-bit versions
>>
>> Home Basic £175
>> Home Premium £214
>> Business £238
>> Ultimate £352
>
> You'd be silly not to buy the OEM version though...

I agree, except the point is these are the real prices Microsoft are  
trying to sell their operating system for. You're essentially saying it's  
silly to buy that suit from the actual store when you can get it cheaper  
in their 'factory' store except what is the cheaper price based upon?

-- 
Phil Cook

--
I once tried to be apathetic, but I just couldn't be bothered
http://flipc.blogspot.com

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And lo on Wed, 13 Feb 2008 15:44:06 -0000, Gail Shaw sa dot com>  
<"<initialsurname"@sentech> did spake, saying:

> As said by someone wise "It is better to remain silent and be assumed to  
> be an idiot, than to open one's mouth and prove that one is"

'What the hell does that mean. Oh no it's gone quiet better say something  
quick'
"Takes one to know one"
'Swish"

-- 
Phil Cook

--
I once tried to be apathetic, but I just couldn't be bothered
http://flipc.blogspot.com

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Darren New wrote:
> 
> Depends on what you're surfing, I suppose. Sure, sometimes it works
> great. Sometimes it takes a lot of CPU cycles until I figure out what's
> going on. And you can't tell me you haven't heard people complaining it
> over-buffers stuff.
> 

Yes. One drain is Flash, which (at least on Linux) consumes resources on
the Mozilla process. I mean one Flash -animation oslt starts leaking and
it seems that Mozilla drains huuuuge amount of memory (and possibly
CPU), while the actual beast is Flash.

-- 
Eero "Aero" Ahonen
   http://www.zbxt.net
      aer### [at] removethiszbxtnetinvalid

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Darren New wrote:
> Eero Ahonen wrote:
>>
>> What driver? What kernel does the system have?
> 
> I don't know. That was a while ago. It was apparently a known problem,
> not that it made it any easier to work around.  It sucks when youhave a
> bug in the software update software. :-)

Ah, ok. And yes, it does suck when software installer sucks.

> Actually, I may be confused. The USB problem was the USB kernel thingie
> going compute-bound at high priority.  Fixed after an update.

Ok.

> There was soemthing else about the install.

You remember Murphy? If something fails, also other things fail, even if
they aren't related. Unfortunately it's not uncommon to see that failed
installation has multiple problems.

>> distribution", but I still don't think it should be generalized to be a
>> *Linux* -feature.
> 
> I'm amused how whenever there's something good, it's a Linux thing, and
> whenever there's a problem, it's not Linux's fault but someone else's. ;-)

Yes and no. Yes, it IS a pretty common way handle things, but not
always. Noticed my words of Afterstep usability (Afterstep, not Linux
particular)? I can run Afterstep on *BSD, Irix, Solaris... But not on
Windows (well, actually I can, but I can't replace Explorer with it).
Nor this "install every driver" -thingie - it's generally a good thing,
but it depends on the distribution. If SuSE or Ubuntu does it (AFAIK
they both do), it doesn't apply on every Linux out there.

>> Nope, you install NIC drivers and download the rest from the Internet ;).
> 
> And from one place!

IF you have hardware that has working* drivers at Windows Update.

*) with your hardware combination


-- 
Eero "Aero" Ahonen
   http://www.zbxt.net
      aer### [at] removethiszbxtnetinvalid

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Warp wrote:
> 
>   I don't believe too many people would complain if Vista broke
> compatibility with Windows 3.1 and DOS (which would be approximately
> the same thing MacOS X has done).
> 
>   (OTOH, I don't really know if Vista actually has done that. I assume
> it hasn't.)
> 

AFAIK 64-bit Windowses actually do that - drop all 16-bit (and under)
-support off.

-- 
Eero "Aero" Ahonen
   http://www.zbxt.net
      aer### [at] removethiszbxtnetinvalid

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On Tue, 12 Feb 2008 15:01:02 -0800, Darren New wrote:

> Jim Henderson wrote:
>> Some of the agreements also included verbiage that forbade the
>> installation of another OS even as a dual-boot option.
> 
> I must have missed that part of the evidence. :-) Yeah, that's pretty
> nasty.

Yeah, I followed the antitrust trial relatively closely - for some very 
interesting reading, read the deposition given by Eric Schmidt (then CEO 
of Novell) - particularly the bits about "bad playing" with mup.sys and 
the client redirector technologies.  I know people who worked on that 
stuff.

Jim

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