Invisible escribió:
> Darren New wrote:
>> I'll disagree with this one too. In some areas, software is like that. 
>> Not in all fields, however. When's the last time your DVD player crashed?
> 
> DVD player? Actually never.
> 
> [It does, however, fail to correctly play a number of DVDs that play 
> perfectly OK in other players. And it was NOT a cheap player, by any 
> stretch of the imagination. Panasonic too.]

In my and my uncle's experience, cheap players cope with crappy (and 
pirated) DVDs better than expensive and good-brand ones!

> My MP3 player? Roughly once every 4 days. (And it HURTS when it crashes!)
> 
> Then I took the firmware supplied by the people who designed and built 
> the device and replaced it by something written by a bunch of Internet 
> heads in their spare time who didn't even have access to the design 
> specs. And you know what? It has about 4x the functionallity, and it 
> never, ever, under any circumstances, crashes.
> 
> Does that not seem wrong to you? That a bunch of guys in their spare 
> time could do a better job than the people you paid money to?
> 

What player is it? Is the firmware Rockbox? :)

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And lo on Tue, 12 Feb 2008 11:44:31 -0000, Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> did  
spake, saying:

> scott wrote:
>>> If M$ made a quality product and charged a lot of money for it, I  
>>> wouldn't have a problem with that.
>>  The MS shareholders would though, because they wouldn't make as much  
>> profit. It's the same as if Ford suddenly decided all cars were going  
>> to be made to Rolls-Royce standards - not exactly a smart business move.
>
> No - but selling cars which you know are going to crash at least once  
> every 52 days... well, if a company tried to do that, they'd be shut  
> down.

No it's subject to the same cost/benefit analysis. If I save $50m from not  
installing some widget and worst case scenario is the company paying total  
damages of $25m if 'found out' then you don't install the widget. If  
people die because of that, then people die.

> However, for software it seems it's OK to sell a malfunctioning product.

It's not legal to sell any malfuntioning product, however you first have  
to define malfunction.

>>> What I have a problem with is the fact that they charge a fortune for  
>>> very low-quality products, and get away with it.
>>  Last time I checked, a company was free to sell their products for  
>> whatever price they wanted to.  If they try to sell them too high,  
>> nobody will buy them.

Unless they're a utility company their prices have to be checked with the  
regulators.

> Well, sure, if there were an alternative, people would run out and buy  
> that in their droves. I'm sure M$ would radically rethink their strategy  
> if that happened. But it won't.

At which point we recognise the free market system in action when it comes  
to monopolies, the company in question doesn't have to create a better  
product then their competitors simply a product not bad enough to  
encourage people to turn away from it.

>>> And they get away with it precisely because of the underhanded  
>>> techniques they use to eliminate all competition.
>>  Never seen any real competition for Windows.
>
> Perhaps not. (Does NetWare count? I don't really know much about it.)

and yet prior to Windows 95 there were quite the number of competing OSs.

> But what about, say, Word? There's quite a few other word processors out  
> there - and in past times there were even more. And most of them were a  
> lot more reliable than Word...

See above re monopolies. You buy the Microsoft word processor to go on the  
Microsoft operating system because it's obviously going to work better.  
Home users will use it as that's what they're used to and then you throw  
copies at the educators so that the next generation is brought up using it.

>> Linux is certainly getting a lot better, if they could get people to  
>> release games for it (like they do for xbox/ps3/pc) then they'd be a  
>> strong competitor I think.  Not used Apples much, but again lack of  
>> games prevents me from looking seriously at it.
>
> Apple requires you to buy new hardware, so it's not purely a software  
> decision.

Yet everyone loves their monopolistic ways :-)

> Linux is nice, but... well, it's fundamentally designed for UNIX nerds.  
> So if you're not, good luck... Besides, I'm not convinced that the whole  
> UNIX design is particularly coherant. (E.g., autoconf exists.)

However as has been pointed out here GNU/Linux has been set up for  
non-nerds, the difficulty lies in good old inertia -

So you've got your computer and it's come with Windows pre-installed  
here's another operating system, you've never used it before and it may  
really screw your hard drive up do you want to use it, do you?

So you're buying your computer and you can choose between Windows which  
you've heard of and every program/game you see is designed for, or you can  
choose something you've kind of vaguely heard of before. Hey why not go  
for the dual-boot option and just waste a ton of space on your hard drive?

At least we've LiveCDs now that helps so much.

-- 
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:

> I don't know much SQL, but at least I know I don't know :)

So Greats once said "the greatest knowledge is in knowing that you know 
nothing". That dude lived several centuries before SQL existed, and he 
was right all that time ago!

> Although I'm 
> definitely not as stupid as to do a SELECT * without WHERE clause and 
> filtering what I want in the code! Geez...

At the very least you'd think they would be manually building a SELECT * 
WHERE RecordID = 1376 for every query or something...

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

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And lo on Tue, 12 Feb 2008 12:58:59 -0000, scott <sco### [at] laptopcom> did  
spake, saying:

>> Any idea how many people are switching away from IE? Enough to provoke  
>> M$ to start development work on it again.
>
> And yet funnily enough since Vista/IE7, I've seen people who previously  
> were using FF now going back to IE - "well it has tabbed browsing  
> already doesn't it?"

Exactly the problem, why install Firefox when IE has the same  
functionality and is just there ready for you to use? Feel free to try and  
talk about standards compatibility to the MySpace generation.

-- 
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:

>> DVD player? Actually never.
>>
>> [It does, however, fail to correctly play a number of DVDs that play 
>> perfectly OK in other players. And it was NOT a cheap player, by any 
>> stretch of the imagination. Panasonic too.]
> 
> In my and my uncle's experience, cheap players cope with crappy (and 
> pirated) DVDs better than expensive and good-brand ones!

The player also takes an absurd amount of time to open the drive door. 
Like, turn it on and press eject. Stand there with the DVD in your hands 
for about 45 seconds before the door opens. Put the DVD in. Close the 
door. Wait another 45 seconds for the player to decide whether there's a 
disk in the drive and whether it's playable.

Sheesh. When I turn on my CD player and hit eject, you know how long it 
takes? 0.2 seconds. Even if it's *playing* a disk it takes 0.2 seconds...

>> Does that not seem wrong to you? That a bunch of guys in their spare 
>> time could do a better job than the people you paid money to?
>>
> 
> What player is it?

iAudio M5L.

> Is the firmware Rockbox? :)

Yes. :-D

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

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scott escribió:
> I don't know what 
> alternatives there are for DirectX for game controller input, sound, 
> networking etc, but I'm sure there are some in use.

SDL = Simple Directmedia Layer. Cross platform, can use GDI or DirectX 
on Windows, and a dozen different things on Linux (including aalib for 
ascii-art on your console). Even runs on Amiga, Dreamcast, Atari... now 
*that* is cross platform.

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>> Did you try using "Open and Repair" from the open dialog box of Word?
>
> And how do you do that?

In the open file dialog, there's a little arrow right next to the "Open" 
icon - click that and you get some further options, one of which is "Open 
and Repair".

> [FWIW, I did spend quite a lot of time researching the options. There's a 
> Word experts website that tells you all the little tricks for fixing 
> corrupted documents. Sadly, none of them work for a document so broken it 
> won't even open at all...]

IME "Open and Repair" opens documents that would normally be unopenable.  It 
then gives you a list of document sections that are corrupt, and makes the 
rest back into a working file.

> Yes. Because the only difference between IE and FF is tabbed browsing. 
> It's not like FF is 98% more efficient or secure or standards-compliant or 
> anything like that...

Most people don't care about that though, the only difference they see (IME) 
is tabbed browsing, and of course the fact that some websites don't work 
with FF.

>> Get a life away from computers :-)
>
> And that is an entire *other* story...

Hehe, seriously, did you ever wonder what it would be like to have a job 
that didn't involve computers?  I wonder sometimes ...

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Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> (And even Linux isn't that hard to work these days.
> Damn hard to set up, but not that hard to operate once you eventually
> get it working.)

hmm, what have you been running?  Linux from Scratch?

Seriously, I've installed Ubuntu 7.10 these days and it starts from a Live-CD,
where you can browse the web while it installs to disk.  The only interventions
it asked were to choose the language from a dropdown, the timezone from a
graphical world map and either choose to eat up all disk in a single partition
or do an assisted partitioning.  3 simple choices, all the rest automated.  All
hardware (pretty standard stuff) correctly detected and set up with reasonable
defaults.

Play some file in a media player and if it doesn't recognize the format, Ubuntu
will offer to download a suitable codec.  If you run a nVidia card, it'll offer
to download and install the official nvidia proprietary driver so that you can
run the composite window manager in all flash bang.

Only thing I needed to know was how to make the ADSL connection:  Help browser
says you have to run pppoeconf from the command-line and provide it with user
login and password for your provider.

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Fa3ien <fab### [at] yourshoesskynetbe> wrote:
> Invisible a écrit :
> > If "programmers" like this were to ever get hold of Haskell... my God,
> > it's too horrifying to think about! >_<
> >
>
> (setq t nil)

(set! bTrue #t)
(set! bFalse #f)

that's the enterprise software developer way... :P

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Phil Cook wrote:

>> No - but selling cars which you know are going to crash at least once 
>> every 52 days... well, if a company tried to do that, they'd be shut 
>> down.
> 
> No it's subject to the same cost/benefit analysis. If I save $50m from 
> not installing some widget and worst case scenario is the company paying 
> total damages of $25m if 'found out' then you don't install the widget. 
> If people die because of that, then people die.

M$ is the largest and richest corporation ever to have existed in 
recorded human history. If they wanted to, they could turn out a quality 
product. It's not like it would cost too much to do it - it wouldn't. 
They have more than enough money to do it. They just have no motivation.

They have succeeded in convincing the general public that it's "normal" 
for software to not work properly, and there's no real competition to 
illustrate the falsehood of this idea. So why bother making a better 
product when you can just continue ripping people off?

>> Well, sure, if there were an alternative, people would run out and buy 
>> that in their droves. I'm sure M$ would radically rethink their 
>> strategy if that happened. But it won't.
> 
> At which point we recognise the free market system in action when it 
> comes to monopolies, the company in question doesn't have to create a 
> better product then their competitors simply a product not bad enough to 
> encourage people to turn away from it.

Indeed. This is what M$ does best - they create software that is utterly 
awful, but not *quite* bad enough for mass migration to take place. 
[Part of this equation is obviously preventing the emergence of anything 
worth migrating to...]

>>>> And they get away with it precisely because of the underhanded 
>>>> techniques they use to eliminate all competition.
>>>  Never seen any real competition for Windows.
>>
>> Perhaps not. (Does NetWare count? I don't really know much about it.)
> 
> and yet prior to Windows 95 there were quite the number of competing OSs.

Really? That's news.

[Remember, until roughly Windows 98, I didn't even own an IBM PC.]

>> Apple requires you to buy new hardware, so it's not purely a software 
>> decision.
> 
> Yet everyone loves their monopolistic ways :-)

They make good stuff? ;-)

If M$ suddenly started making really awsome products, people would like 
it. What everybody hates is being forced to buy extortionately 
over-priced crapware because somebody has illegally exterminated all 
competition.

> At least we've LiveCDs now that helps so much.

BTW, have you ever used a Windows Live CD?

If you thought it was slow running from your HD then... you ain't seen 
nothing yet! B-b-b-baby, you just ain't seen nothing yet!!

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

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scott escribió:
> Virtual memory, automatic updates, protecting itself from nasty programs 
> that try to access things they shouldn't, providing common dialogs for 
> all applications, plug and play, CD/DVD-RW access, wireless networking, 
> remote desktop, configuring machines remotely, network file systems, 
> network printing, offline files, hibernating, file type associations, 
> encryption, working in multiple time zones, working with different 
> region settings, firewall.  I'm sure there are more, but those are the 
> most useful.
> 

I just looked through my service list to try proving you wrong, and 
disabled these services:

"Quick wireless networking", enabled by default, yet I'm using a 
Ethernet cable and this machine has no wireless hardware.

DCOM launch, I can't disable this one, but I know I don't need DCOM and 
has been a security hole in the past.

Machine Debug Manager (C:\Program files\Common files\Microsoft 
Shared\VS7DEBUG\MDM.EXE), which I don't need since I use gdb, not Visual 
Studio debugger. Why is this even *installed*??

Remote registry. My sister doesn't need to poke around on my registry 
(but I do need to do it on her machine). Hanged trying to stop it, but 
at least I could set it not to start automatically.

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"scott" <sco### [at] laptopcom> wrote:
> And when my mum tries to plug in her new camera...?  I was actually very
> impressed that my mum managed to install the software for her camera and get
> it working without even a single phone call to me :-)

On Linux she wouldn't need to install any software on CD whatsoever.  Digital
cameras are just USB devices and USB is an industry-strength standard.  It
works on Linux out-of-the-box.  And it comes with plenty of image visualizers
to see the content.

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Invisible escribió:
>> automatic updates
> 
> Which is only necessary because the software wasn't done right in the 
> first place.

Or because Internet wasn't as widespread. Where would you get the 
downloads *from*?

>> providing common dialogs for all applications

Uh, this is provided by a SERVICE?

Post a reply to this message

scott wrote:
>>> Did you try using "Open and Repair" from the open dialog box of Word?
>>
>> And how do you do that?
> 
> In the open file dialog, there's a little arrow right next to the "Open" 
> icon - click that and you get some further options, one of which is 
> "Open and Repair".

Hmm. I would have never, ever found that. Not in fifty years.

And who says nobody learns anything by having M$ rants? :-D

[insert HCI comment here]

>> [FWIW, I did spend quite a lot of time researching the options. 
>> There's a Word experts website that tells you all the little tricks 
>> for fixing corrupted documents. Sadly, none of them work for a 
>> document so broken it won't even open at all...]
> 
> IME "Open and Repair" opens documents that would normally be 
> unopenable.  It then gives you a list of document sections that are 
> corrupt, and makes the rest back into a working file.

The advice I read was stuff like saving the file in a different file 
format, cut and pasting everything except section markers into a new 
document, etc. Which would probably work if Word didn't instantly die as 
soon as it touches the file...

>> Yes. Because the only difference between IE and FF is tabbed browsing. 
>> It's not like FF is 98% more efficient or secure or 
>> standards-compliant or anything like that...
> 
> Most people don't care about that though, the only difference they see 
> (IME) is tabbed browsing, and of course the fact that some websites 
> don't work with FF.

You're probably right about that. [Although you'd think most people 
would notice how much faster FF is.] There are of course quite a few 
sites that work fine in FF but not IE. Just nowhere near as many as the 
other way round.

I still think one day M$ will have a big problem because they will 
release IE 28 and discover that all the old crap written for IE 4 
doesn't work any more...

> Hehe, seriously, did you ever wonder what it would be like to have a job 
> that didn't involve computers?  I wonder sometimes ...

Oh, that's easy. I'd be fired. Fairly rapidly.

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

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Phil Cook wrote:

> Exactly the problem, why install Firefox when IE has the same 
> functionality and is just there ready for you to use? Feel free to try 
> and talk about standards compatibility to the MySpace generation.

MySpace and standards in the same sentence?

*gaaaaah!* >_<

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

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nemesis wrote:
> Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
>> (And even Linux isn't that hard to work these days.
>> Damn hard to set up, but not that hard to operate once you eventually
>> get it working.)
> 
> hmm, what have you been running?  Linux from Scratch?

KNOPPIX [which is based on Debian] and SUSE.

I have still yet to figure out how on Earth you make it so you can play 
DVDs...

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

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nemesis wrote:
> "scott" <sco### [at] laptopcom> wrote:
>> And when my mum tries to plug in her new camera...?  I was actually very
>> impressed that my mum managed to install the software for her camera and get
>> it working without even a single phone call to me :-)
> 
> On Linux she wouldn't need to install any software on CD whatsoever.  Digital
> cameras are just USB devices and USB is an industry-strength standard.  It
> works on Linux out-of-the-box.  And it comes with plenty of image visualizers
> to see the content.

USB is a physical layer standard. The wire protocol? Well, good luck 
with that... If the camera speaks the mass storage device protocol, 
it'll work on just about every OS known to man that supports USB. If it 
uses a custom proprietry protocol... well, you had *better* have 
drivers! What's that? Your manufacturer wouldn't release the protocol 
spec without an NDA? Oh, I'm sorry, you have no Linux driver. :-P

I had endless fun trying to get SUSE to talk to a HP LaserJet 1000 over 
USB. You should try it sometime. It requires you to connect to the 
Internet, manually download a tar.gzip file, figure out how to unpack 
it, do the whole configure/make/install trip, and then *maybe* CUPS will 
be able to drive the printer. Oh, but you gotta to it just right. [Gee, 
it almost sounds like Windows!]

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

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Invisible escribió:
> It requires you to connect to the
> Internet, manually download a tar.gzip file, figure out how to unpack 
> it, do the whole configure/make/install trip,

That's the *basic* installation method on Linux. If you don't even know 
how to unpack a .tar.gz... you don't know Linux.

Post a reply to this message

> Hmm. I would have never, ever found that. Not in fifty years.
> 
> And who says nobody learns anything by having M$ rants? :-D
> 
> [insert HCI comment here]

Help -> "Open a corrupt file"

1st result.

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And lo on Tue, 12 Feb 2008 14:46:36 -0000, Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> did  
spake, saying:

> Phil Cook wrote:
>
>>> No - but selling cars which you know are going to crash at least once  
>>> every 52 days... well, if a company tried to do that, they'd be shut  
>>> down.
>>  No it's subject to the same cost/benefit analysis. If I save $50m from  
>> not installing some widget and worst case scenario is the company  
>> paying total damages of $25m if 'found out' then you don't install the  
>> widget. If people die because of that, then people die.
>
> M$ is the largest and richest corporation ever to have existed in  
> recorded human history. If they wanted to, they could turn out a quality  
> product. It's not like it would cost too much to do it - it wouldn't.  
> They have more than enough money to do it. They just have no motivation.

Which as you pointed out they gained when Firefox started to gain ground  
with regard to IE.

> They have succeeded in convincing the general public that it's "normal"  
> for software to not work properly, and there's no real competition to  
> illustrate the falsehood of this idea. So why bother making a better  
> product when you can just continue ripping people off?

To be fair they've failed to pass the blame on to the faulty/cheating  
device drivers that are more often the cause of the problems, to be unfair  
they should have written an OS that didn't allow faulty/cheating device  
drivers to function.

>>> Well, sure, if there were an alternative, people would run out and buy  
>>> that in their droves. I'm sure M$ would radically rethink their  
>>> strategy if that happened. But it won't.
>>  At which point we recognise the free market system in action when it  
>> comes to monopolies, the company in question doesn't have to create a  
>> better product then their competitors simply a product not bad enough  
>> to encourage people to turn away from it.
>
> Indeed. This is what M$ does best - they create software that is utterly  
> awful, but not *quite* bad enough for mass migration to take place.  
> [Part of this equation is obviously preventing the emergence of anything  
> worth migrating to...]

It's more like swimming by keeping your head just above the water. Sure  
you could flail your arms and lega about to move, but why bother when  
you're doing just fine by doing nothing. The only time you need to exhert  
yourself is if the water rises or something comes along to botehr you.

>>> Apple requires you to buy new hardware, so it's not purely a software  
>>> decision.
>>  Yet everyone loves their monopolistic ways :-)
>
> They make good stuff? ;-)

They make pretty stuff. If Microsoft could control the hardware as tightly  
as Apple I'm sure we'd all be praising the robust nature of Windows and  
not caring about all the products they've integrated into the OS. They had  
a chance with Media Center, but tried to accomodate too many components;  
they had a chance with their Xbox, but made it PC-shaped; and they had a  
chance with the Xbox360, but jumped the gun quality-wise; meh screw them  
they've had their chance.

> If M$ suddenly started making really awsome products, people would like  
> it.

Well yeah and as has been mentioned if Ford started making Rolls Royces at  
'normal' prices then people would like that too.

> What everybody hates is being forced to buy extortionately over-priced  
> crapware because somebody has illegally exterminated all competition.

No-one's forcing you to buy a computer, no-one's forcing you to buy  
Microsoft products

>> At least we've LiveCDs now that helps so much.
>
> BTW, have you ever used a Windows Live CD?

I've yet to be inflicted with the pleasure.

-- 
Phil Cook

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

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"Invisible" <voi### [at] devnull> a écrit dans le message de news: 
47b1b14c$1@news.povray.org...

> M$ is the largest and richest corporation ever to have existed in recorded 
> human history.

Microsoft is the *** 139th *** global corporation in terms of revenue, right 
after A.P. Moller-Maersk Group, which is a freight company, i.e. folks who 
use big boats to transport bananas around the globe.
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/global500/2007/full_list/index.html

That should keep Microsoft-themed hyperboles (and the relevance of the 
software industry compared to the banana shipping industry) in check I 
guess.

G.

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

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Nicolas Alvarez <nic### [at] gmailisthebestcom> wrote:
> Invisible escribió:
> > It requires you to connect to the
> > Internet, manually download a tar.gzip file, figure out how to unpack
> > it, do the whole configure/make/install trip,
>
> That's the *basic* installation method on Linux. If you don't even know
> how to unpack a .tar.gz... you don't know Linux.

so that's why he keeps crashing on Linux... :)

it's actually so basic I think the graphical program to unpack archives we'll
recognize it.  But Invisible seems to want to do it the hard way, on the
command-line when he clearly isn't well acquainted with...

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"Darren New" <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote in message
news:47b1365a$1@news.povray.org...

> I took over (technically) at one place and made the rule that such was
> disallowed.

The last coding standard I wrote was 6 pages long. Included things like:
No cursors
Don't distinct every
Don't use functions on columns in the where clause
Don't use SELECT *
All tables shall have a primary key
Evaluate all new tables (and modified existing tables) for indexes

Pity none of the devs bother reading it. It would save them some time when I
review their code. <evil grin>

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nemesis wrote:

> it's actually so basic I think the graphical program to unpack archives we'll
> recognize it.  But Invisible seems to want to do it the hard way, on the
> command-line when he clearly isn't well acquainted with...

The box I was trying to set up as a print server doesn't have X 
installed. It's just a laptop that sits under the printer to allow it to 
be networked. So, when you've finished being smart... :-P

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

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"Gilles Tran" <gil### [at] agroparistechfr> wrote:
> "Invisible" <voi### [at] devnull> a écrit dans le message de news:
> 47b1b14c$1@news.povray.org...
>
> > M$ is the largest and richest corporation ever to have existed in recorded
> > human history.
>
> Microsoft is the *** 139th *** global corporation in terms of revenue, right
> after A.P. Moller-Maersk Group, which is a freight company, i.e. folks who
> use big boats to transport bananas around the globe.
> http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/global500/2007/full_list/index.html

damn!  I guess we IT geeks were in need of some perspective... :P

I'm going bananas!!

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Gilles Tran wrote:

> Microsoft is the *** 139th *** global corporation in terms of revenue, right 
> after A.P. Moller-Maersk Group, which is a freight company, i.e. folks who 
> use big boats to transport bananas around the globe.
> http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/global500/2007/full_list/index.html
> 
> That should keep Microsoft-themed hyperboles (and the relevance of the 
> software industry compared to the banana shipping industry) in check I 
> guess.

That is the most bizzare thing I've read today.

So a company that transports a dirt-cheap commodity item that almost 
nobody buys makes more money than the company that charges an absolute 
fortune for it's products, which are used by the entire industrialised 
world. How does *that* compute?! o_O

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

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Phil Cook wrote:

>> They have succeeded in convincing the general public that it's 
>> "normal" for software to not work properly, and there's no real 
>> competition to illustrate the falsehood of this idea. So why bother 
>> making a better product when you can just continue ripping people off?
> 
> To be fair they've failed to pass the blame on to the faulty/cheating 
> device drivers that are more often the cause of the problems, to be 
> unfair they should have written an OS that didn't allow faulty/cheating 
> device drivers to function.

You can't really prevent crappy software from being crappy. But when you 
release crappy products yourself, and generally create the consumer 
expectation that it's "normal" for software to not work correctly, why 
are 3rd parties going to aim any higher?

>> If M$ suddenly started making really awsome products, people would 
>> like it.
> 
> Well yeah and as has been mentioned if Ford started making Rolls Royces 
> at 'normal' prices then people would like that too.

Software that works properly is *not* Rolls Royce design. It's *basic* 
design! You don't go to a watch shop and hear "well, you can have this 
watch for £30 that kinda mostly works, or this watch for £30,000 which 
actually tells the right time", do you? In a watch shop, *ALL* the 
watches WORK PROPERLY! Even the absurdly cheap ones. Sheesh...

>> What everybody hates is being forced to buy extortionately over-priced 
>> crapware because somebody has illegally exterminated all competition.
> 
> No-one's forcing you to buy a computer, no-one's forcing you to buy 
> Microsoft products

No-one's forcing you to buy a computer. But IF you buy one, it's pretty 
much a certain that you *will* have to run M$ software on it. I tried to 
escape, but it just can't be done...

>>> At least we've LiveCDs now that helps so much.
>>
>> BTW, have you ever used a Windows Live CD?
> 
> I've yet to be inflicted with the pleasure.

Norton Ghost.

The old version I've got at work boots into PC-DOS and lets you run the 
software. However, the newer version my Dad has boots into a Live 
Windows and only lets you perform restores, not backups. You must 
install the bloatware onto your HD to perform backups. >_<

You know how CD-ROMs have a *really* long seek time? Well, for random 
access, that's BAD.

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

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And lo on Tue, 12 Feb 2008 15:59:05 -0000, Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> did  
spake, saying:

> Phil Cook wrote:
>
>>> They have succeeded in convincing the general public that it's  
>>> "normal" for software to not work properly, and there's no real  
>>> competition to illustrate the falsehood of this idea. So why bother  
>>> making a better product when you can just continue ripping people off?
>>  To be fair they've failed to pass the blame on to the faulty/cheating  
>> device drivers that are more often the cause of the problems, to be  
>> unfair they should have written an OS that didn't allow faulty/cheating  
>> device drivers to function.
>
> You can't really prevent crappy software from being crappy. But when you  
> release crappy products yourself, and generally create the consumer  
> expectation that it's "normal" for software to not work correctly, why  
> are 3rd parties going to aim any higher?

As I implied a failure to educate users.

>>> If M$ suddenly started making really awsome products, people would  
>>> like it.
>>  Well yeah and as has been mentioned if Ford started making Rolls  
>> Royces at 'normal' prices then people would like that too.
>
> Software that works properly is *not* Rolls Royce design. It's *basic*  
> design! You don't go to a watch shop and hear "well, you can have this  
> watch for £30 that kinda mostly works, or this watch for £30,000 which  
> actually tells the right time", do you? In a watch shop, *ALL* the  
> watches WORK PROPERLY! Even the absurdly cheap ones. Sheesh...

Er this from a guy whose sister bought him a new watch because the  
batteries weren't lasting in his old one. Crappy watch = short lived life,  
poor time keeping; quality watch = long life, perfect time keeping. Both  
watches work for a given value of work.

>>> What everybody hates is being forced to buy extortionately over-priced  
>>> crapware because somebody has illegally exterminated all competition.
>>  No-one's forcing you to buy a computer, no-one's forcing you to buy  
>> Microsoft products
>
> No-one's forcing you to buy a computer. But IF you buy one, it's pretty  
> much a certain that you *will* have to run M$ software on it. I tried to  
> escape, but it just can't be done...

Depends on what you want to run. Again, as has been pointed out before,  
for basic clerical work Linux works. The problems can be summed up with  
Nicholas's "That's the *basic* installation method on Linux. If you don't  
even know how to unpack a .tar.gz... you don't know Linux."

>>>> At least we've LiveCDs now that helps so much.
>>>
>>> BTW, have you ever used a Windows Live CD?
>>  I've yet to be inflicted with the pleasure.
>
> Norton Ghost.
>
> The old version I've got at work boots into PC-DOS and lets you run the  
> software. However, the newer version my Dad has boots into a Live  
> Windows and only lets you perform restores, not backups. You must  
> install the bloatware onto your HD to perform backups. >_<
>
> You know how CD-ROMs have a *really* long seek time? Well, for random  
> access, that's BAD.

Remind me, was Norton this bad before it was acquired by Symantec.

-- 
Phil Cook

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

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>> Software that works properly is *not* Rolls Royce design. It's *basic* 
>> design! You don't go to a watch shop and hear "well, you can have this 
>> watch for £30 that kinda mostly works, or this watch for £30,000 which 
>> actually tells the right time", do you? In a watch shop, *ALL* the 
>> watches WORK PROPERLY! Even the absurdly cheap ones. Sheesh...
> 
> Er this from a guy whose sister bought him a new watch because the 
> batteries weren't lasting in his old one.

Well, for the previous 8 years it worked fine. Clearly something has 
gone wrong with it now. Mechanical devices tend to wear out over time, 
and 8 years is not an unreasonable time frame for a watch to work. If 
I'd bought a more expensive watch, maybe it would have lasted longer.

Similarly, I doubt any software will ever be *completely* bug-free. The 
point is that M$ isn't even trying. They can't be bothered.

>> No-one's forcing you to buy a computer. But IF you buy one, it's 
>> pretty much a certain that you *will* have to run M$ software on it. I 
>> tried to escape, but it just can't be done...
> 
> Depends on what you want to run. Again, as has been pointed out before, 
> for basic clerical work Linux works. The problems can be summed up with 
> Nicholas's "That's the *basic* installation method on Linux. If you 
> don't even know how to unpack a .tar.gz... you don't know Linux."

Partly it's the whole "everyone runs only Windows, so we only need to 
develop for Windows", which creates the whole "people only develop for 
Windows, so I can only run Windows". E.g., good luck finding any 
headline games that run on Linux. And good luck finding Linux drivers 
for game hardware.

Linux actually makes quite a sensible choice for servers. I mean, if 
you've got a server, one would damn well *hope* you have an expert to 
run it [no matter what software it runs]. So, assuming your software 
runs there, it makes good sense.

[Random: Did you know, you can't play Team Fortress 2 on Linux, but you 
*can* run a dedicated TF2 game server on it? OTOH, I guess the game 
server only needs to send and receive UDP. The game itself needs to do 
fancy DirectX stuff that would be a nightmare to port...]

I have, on several occasions, seriously considered moving to a Mac. 
There are 2 real stopping points:

1. I don't have that kind of money.

2. None of my [very expensive] software would work any more.

>> Norton Ghost.
>>
>> The old version I've got at work boots into PC-DOS and lets you run 
>> the software. However, the newer version my Dad has boots into a Live 
>> Windows and only lets you perform restores, not backups. You must 
>> install the bloatware onto your HD to perform backups. >_<
>>
>> You know how CD-ROMs have a *really* long seek time? Well, for random 
>> access, that's BAD.
> 
> Remind me, was Norton this bad before it was acquired by Symantec.

Both CDs have Symantec written on them. I've got Ghost 2003 at work. 
[The one that actually lets you copy data.] My dad has something newer 
[which doesn't].

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

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Tom Austin wrote:
> IIRC Win95 ran on MS-DOS 7.  It actually booted to DOS and then loaded 
> windows.  The reboot to DOS only set up the environment customized to 
> the application you were trying to run.
> 
> The same went for Win98 & ME.  Just that DOS become less and less 
> important.  But I remember that they all ran on top of DOS.

AFAIK, Windows 3.1 was the last purely windows system for DOS.  From W95 
forward, Windows was already a full OS, though not 32 bits.  But yes, I 
think DOS booted and then booted Win.  DOS became as irrelevant as the 
old programs for it began being rewritten for true 32 bit OS.  It then 
run in emulated mode inside Windows...

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Invisible wrote:
> The box I was trying to set up as a print server doesn't have X 
> installed. It's just a laptop that sits under the printer to allow it to 
> be networked. So, when you've finished being smart... :-P

how are you attempting to setup a print server remotely when you don't 
even know to use gzip?  Then don't come with those stories of Linux not 
being ready for production because it crashes every time.  Because a 
Linux admin is supposed to have some knowledge when running as root.  No 
yes, no cancellation dialogs, remember?

not like some Windows average user would be any luckier to setup a 
remote print server with an admin account...

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nemesis wrote:
> Invisible wrote:
>> The box I was trying to set up as a print server doesn't have X 
>> installed. It's just a laptop that sits under the printer to allow it 
>> to be networked. So, when you've finished being smart... :-P
> 
> how are you attempting to setup a print server remotely when you don't 
> even know to use gzip?  Then don't come with those stories of Linux not 
> being ready for production because it crashes every time.

Er, hold on one sec... *WHERE* did I say that Linux crashes all the time 
and isn't production ready? I never said anything of the sort.

What I *actually* said that Linux is more reliable than Windows, just 
harder to set up. [It is after all *designed* for experts.] And, 
unfortunately, you often can't get hold of the necessary hardware 
drivers for things.

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

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Invisible wrote:
> KNOPPIX [which is based on Debian] and SUSE.
> 
> I have still yet to figure out how on Earth you make it so you can play 
> DVDs...

Knoppix is a LiveCD and while good, if on lower hardware it is indeed 
terribly slow.  Suse is now pretty much a property of M$.

try Ubuntu.  You won't be disappointed.  It's based on Debian too.

the DVD thing, I don't have a DVD drive to test it out, but I think all 
you need is some deCSS implementation and mplayer.  Or perhaps just 
mplayer...

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nemesis wrote:

> Suse is now pretty much a property of M$.

I'm not entirely sure that statement is actually correct.

M$ doesn't *own* Novell. They merely agreed in principle to cooperate in 
their design strategies. That's all. SuSE is still powered by OSS and so 
on and so forth.

> try Ubuntu.  You won't be disappointed.  It's based on Debian too.

How do you even pronounce that? [Not that it matters I guess...]

> the DVD thing, I don't have a DVD drive to test it out, but I think all 
> you need is some deCSS implementation and mplayer.  Or perhaps just 
> mplayer...

Isn't DeCSS illegal?

Anyway, I'll have to check out the SuSE FAQ sometime. I'm *sure* it must 
be in there somewhere...

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

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Invisible wrote:
> So a company that transports a dirt-cheap commodity item that almost 
> nobody buys makes more money than the company that charges an absolute 
> fortune for it's products, which are used by the entire industrialised 
> world. How does *that* compute?! o_O

you know, that's the way geeks think.  But that's not how the world 
spins.  It's not because you feed yourself just with pizza and cheetos 
that nobody else in the world eats bananas... in fact, it's one of the 
most nutritive fruits out there.  Ask any athlete... if you know one, 
that is... :)

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Invisible escribió:
> nemesis wrote:
>> the DVD thing, I don't have a DVD drive to test it out, but I think 
>> all you need is some deCSS implementation and mplayer.  Or perhaps 
>> just mplayer...
> 
> Isn't DeCSS illegal?

Maybe it is. But it was made so you could play DVDs on Linux. Going 
illegal is the only way, thanks to DRM.

Post a reply to this message

Nicolas Alvarez wrote:
> Invisible escribió:
>> nemesis wrote:
>>> the DVD thing, I don't have a DVD drive to test it out, but I think 
>>> all you need is some deCSS implementation and mplayer.  Or perhaps 
>>> just mplayer...
>>
>> Isn't DeCSS illegal?
> 
> Maybe it is. But it was made so you could play DVDs on Linux. Going 
> illegal is the only way, thanks to DRM.

God damn you DRM!! >_<

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

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nemesis wrote:

>> So a company that transports a dirt-cheap commodity item that almost 
>> nobody buys makes more money than the company that charges an absolute 
>> fortune for it's products, which are used by the entire industrialised 
>> world. How does *that* compute?! o_O
> 
> you know, that's the way geeks think.  But that's not how the world 
> spins.  It's not because you feed yourself just with pizza and cheetos 
> that nobody else in the world eats bananas... in fact, it's one of the 
> most nutritive fruits out there.  Ask any athlete... if you know one, 
> that is... :)

Yeah, but... A copy of Vista costs, what, £800? And a bunch of bananas 
costs... £0.11. Obviously you don't buy Vista once a week, but even 
so... you'd have to eat A LOT of bananas to even approach the amount of 
money that M$ makes on a single transaction.

And these guys don't even *grow* bananas. They most *ship* them. They 
probably make, like, £0.03 per crate or something...

I mean, I guess the numbers must stack up somehow, but DAMN, that's far-out!

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

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Phil Cook wrote:
> Depends on what you want to run. Again, as has been pointed out before, 
> for basic clerical work Linux works. The problems can be summed up with 
> Nicholas's "That's the *basic* installation method on Linux. If you 
> don't even know how to unpack a .tar.gz... you don't know Linux."

no, this is just plain wrong.  Unless Nicolas is running Slackware, the 
Linux community as a whole has moved from basic 
tarball-source-compile-install to automated dependency-tracking 
repository packages installs.  There's no command-line involved, unless 
you want to.

What I think Nicolas means is that gzip is the *nix standard packing 
format, which it's always been indeed.

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Invisible wrote:
> nemesis wrote:
>> Suse is now pretty much a property of M$.
> 
> I'm not entirely sure that statement is actually correct.
> 
> M$ doesn't *own* Novell. They merely agreed in principle to cooperate in 
> their design strategies. That's all. SuSE is still powered by OSS and so 
> on and so forth.

It's crippled with M$ tech and IP, like mono and all tools which more 
and more depend on it.  That's what Ballmer meant by Linux using M$ IP.

> How do you even pronounce that? [Not that it matters I guess...]

there's an ogg video of Nelson Mandela -- as if you would know who is he 
-- in the Examples directory.  He speaks about the ancient Ubuntu 
african concept...

(Ooboontoo, emphasis on middle syllable, t pronounced kinda like in 
"bottle")

>> the DVD thing, I don't have a DVD drive to test it out, but I think 
>> all you need is some deCSS implementation and mplayer.  Or perhaps 
>> just mplayer...
> 
> Isn't DeCSS illegal?

is it legal to make backup copies of stuff you buy?  Is it legal to get 
rid of stupid mechanisms that don't play well with OSes that don't act 
according to the RIAA and others best interests?

You can make up your own mind or just follow their rules...

> Anyway, I'll have to check out the SuSE FAQ sometime. I'm *sure* it must 
> be in there somewhere...

sure, it's full of M$ IP, why not some RIAA licenses as well...

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Invisible wrote:

> Yeah, but... A copy of Vista costs, what, £800? And a bunch of bananas 
> costs... £0.11. Obviously you don't buy Vista once a week, but even 
> so... you'd have to eat A LOT of bananas to even approach the amount of 
> money that M$ makes on a single transaction.
> 
> And these guys don't even *grow* bananas. They most *ship* them. They 
> probably make, like, £0.03 per crate or something...

Do you have any idea the cost involved in making a major OS update like 
vista, including support and maintenance on the project versus plucking 
bananas from a tree?

Last I checked, banana plantation workers don't make $75,000+/year 
salaries.

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"Invisible" <voi### [at] devnull> a écrit dans le message de news: 
47b1cf6d$2@news.povray.org...

> I mean, I guess the numbers must stack up somehow, but DAMN, that's 
> far-out!

Well, it's well-established by now that you live in a parallel world, and 
that povray.off-topic is some kind of portal window into this amazing real 
world you keep hearing about. Nothing wrong with that of course, but you 
should definitely understand that the realities in your parallel world are 
far different from the realities in this world.

So, while in your world nobody eats bananas and Microsoft is the biggest 
company in the world, in this real world, people eat 70 million tons of 
bananas each year and Microsoft is a small outfit (relatively speaking).

1 ton of bananas = 1000 to 2000 $ so a rough estimate of the banana trade is 
about 70-140 billion dollars = more or less twice the revenue of Microsoft. 
And that's only for bananas. Look up the figures for wheat, maize or 
soybeans.

Of course, in the real world, food is actually more important that software, 
now how does *that* compute? :P

(Also, I said that the Maersk group shipped bananas, but that was a joke; 
indeed, they may ship more profitable stuff such as oil, cars and Chinese 
Christmas toys http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emma_M%C3%A6rsk; freight is a 
gigantic business that made billionaires such as 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Onassis, who was more famous than Bill Gates in 
his time).

G.

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"nemesis" <nam### [at] nospamgmailcom> wrote in message
news:47b1d19d$1@news.povray.org...

> there's an ogg video of Nelson Mandela -- as if you would know who is he
> -- in the Examples directory.  He speaks about the ancient Ubuntu
> african concept...

If he doesn't, I'm contemplating shooting him!

The video's also on wiki -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Experience_ubuntu.ogg

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Invisible wrote:
> Given time, you could probably integrate the entire thing into one giant 
> SQL statement. You'd probably find that you can actually simplify it 
> down to something rather smaller once it stated all in one operation. 
> And that the DB engine can do some pretty impressive optimisations after 
> that too.

Yeah, that's why I'm after it.

On the other hand, I've done SQL statements that I gave up on after 
they'd run for a couple of days, recoded it as a "SELECT *" without a 
where clause, calculated the new column, and wrote it back, and *that* 
ran in about 90 seconds.

(Basically, a bunch of streams, each with an event having a start time 
but no end time. Each event ends when the next event starts on the same 
stream. Assign the "duration" column to any row that doesn't have a 
duration and isn't the most recent record for that stream.)

> OTOH, if you haven't got enough time to do it... what can you do?

Post to p.o-t too much?

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

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didn't you have a counter somewhere on the number of crashes you 
experienced with it?

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nemesis wrote:
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>> Because you had lots of OSes called UNIX that weren't compatible with
>> each other, even at the source level.  (See autoconf)
> 
> that only happens when you exchange a common API for platform-specific APIs that
> do the same thing faster or funkier.  It happens even in Java.
> 
> It doesn't really happen in M$ because there really is a single vendor with a
> single set of solutions and they can cram old APIs to handle old code in their
> newer products with newer incompatible APIs.

Yes. And how does that mean that MS didn't cause that to happen?

>>> Win9x did not support DOS programs: they simply had DOS included to handle
>>> those.
>> DOS programs ran in a window, just like they do now.
> 
> It runs in a window because that's how graphical ambients run console programs:
> by opening a window terminal and letting the console program do their job.  It
> doesn't magically transform them into full graphical programs with graphical
> drop-down menus.

Who said anything about graphics, let alone magic?

>  The OS calls such programs did were DOS calls and such calls
> are still supported these days by letting an emulated DOS handle those.

Yes. But there's also a whole bunch of things the old code did that 
didn't go through APIs, like writing directly to screen memory or 
invoking hardware INT calls. Those got caught and emulated too.

> So they can afford to provide their older APIs together with the new.  It's
> their own code, it's not really "2 different OSes"!

The program runs on two different OSes. Of course, to make this happen, 
the new OS has to support the old API. I'm not sure which of my 
statements you think you're disputing here.

>> So, different operating systems. You're making my point for me. :-)
> old code still handled by old code, not new.

Not true. What's the code in DOS that handles writing to screen memory? 
Where's the code in DOS that handles moving the cursor via IBM BIOS calls?

> last few years and while the bugs are certainly different than those of MS
> software, there doesn't seem to be as many or as little as those.

And Linux still isn't as big as MS. Yes, MS has more bugs per line of 
code than Linux.  About 2 or 3 times as many, last study I saw. But MS 
is a commercial concern.  The bugs that MS has don't seriously affect 
their profitability. (Well, before Vista, at least.)

> So, why is the single largest and richest developer in the world with so many
> bright minds and a single set of enforcement rules over their developers about
> code quality and API standards get rivalled by ad-hoc developers from around
> the world working on many different little pieces of software that eventually
> get assembled into a Linux distribution?

I'm not sure. I'd guess it's because the people working on Linux don't 
have nearly as much backward compatibility problems, and they don't have 
nearly as many cost concerns. I.e., if there's a bug in a popular Linux 
application, Linux kernel authors don't add code to the kernel to work 
around the bug - they fix the bug in the application. MS doesn't really 
have that option. Plus, if there's a problem with Linux, the person who 
fixes it is the person with the problem. With MS, the bug in the OS gets 
fixed for the customer only if it's worthwhile to MS, not if it's 
worthwhile to the customer. Economics is always skewed by having the 
benefits go to someone other than the person paying.

> It seems to me MS crappy, crippled software is such by design, so people have
> always a reason to update.

I'm sure there are decisions made to ship less-than-optimal products 
that can have an upgrade path. Every commercial company does this, 
monopoly or not.

On the other hand, I've been getting free updates and bugfixes from MS 
for years and years. So I'm not sure what incentive you think they'd 
have to ship buggy products if they're going to fix them for free.

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

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Gilles Tran wrote:
> "Invisible" <voi### [at] devnull> a écrit dans le message de news: 
> 47b1cf6d$2@news.povray.org...
> 
>> I mean, I guess the numbers must stack up somehow, but DAMN, that's 
>> far-out!
> 
> Well, it's well-established by now that you live in a parallel world, and 
> that povray.off-topic is some kind of portal window into this amazing real 
> world you keep hearing about. Nothing wrong with that of course, but you 
> should definitely understand that the realities in your parallel world are 
> far different from the realities in this world.
> 
> So, while in your world nobody eats bananas and Microsoft is the biggest 
> company in the world, in this real world, people eat 70 million tons of 
> bananas each year and Microsoft is a small outfit (relatively speaking).

ROTFLOL

you know deep inside you like the lil' guy, Gilles...

Post a reply to this message

Invisible wrote:
> Gail Shaw wrote:
> 
>> And how much software did you buy before MS was around? Don't confuse
>> correlation with causation.
> 
> Quite a lot. (Well, my parents anyway, not me personally. I didn't have 
> any money...)
> 
> We had premptive multitasking operating systems and large C compilers 
> and ray tracers and modellers and music sequencing software and complex 
> computer games and so on and so forth.

And what machine were you running this stuff on?

"""
After reading the January 1, 1975 issue of Popular Electronics that 
demonstrated the Altair 8800, Bill Gates called the creators of the new 
microcomputer, MITS (Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems), 
offering to demonstrate an implementation of the BASIC programming 
language for the system
"""

What large C compilers and music sequencing software was running before 
MS was writing software?

>> I'm emphasising small, because small software is 'easy' to write.
> 
> I don't really see how the software M$ writes is any "bigger" or "more 
> complex" than what existed before.

Uh... You don't think Windows XP is bigger or more complex than the 
mainframe OSes of the mid-70s? It's not bigger and more complex than CP/M?

> Similarly, have you *ever* seen Linux crash? 

Regularly. 3 or 4 times last week alone. On a machine where Windows 
never crashes. Sure, go ahead, blame the hardware.

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

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Darren New wrote:
> nemesis wrote:
>> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>>> Because you had lots of OSes called UNIX that weren't compatible with
>>> each other, even at the source level.  (See autoconf)
>>
>> that only happens when you exchange a common API for platform-specific 
>> APIs that
>> do the same thing faster or funkier.  It happens even in Java.
>>
>> It doesn't really happen in M$ because there really is a single vendor 
>> with a
>> single set of solutions and they can cram old APIs to handle old code 
>> in their
>> newer products with newer incompatible APIs.
> 
> Yes. And how does that mean that MS didn't cause that to happen?

because apps running in Windows don't magically run on Solaris, Mac OS, 
Linux or whatever.  What I'm trying to say is that W95, WNT or Vista, 
while not the same OS, continue using old API code to handle old user 
apps.  So, it's MS made cross-platform software possible.  The old apps 
are still relying on old API code, not new code from the new OS handling 
the old apps.

What really made cross-platform software a little more closer to reality 
were industry-strength standards, the internet, quite a few 
cross-platform development languages (Java, Python, Perl etc) and, yes, 
open-source software.  You have the source and it's compiled and running 
everywhere, so let's build more from there on and get done with it.  No 
more proprietary APIs, more portability across truly different OSes...

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Darren New wrote:
> Invisible wrote:
>> Similarly, have you *ever* seen Linux crash? 
> 
> Regularly. 3 or 4 times last week alone. On a machine where Windows 
> never crashes. Sure, go ahead, blame the hardware.

were you running as root?

desktop, server?  task?

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