Aaaarrrggghhhh!!!! ... also many other expressions indicating extreme
frustration.
Why is it that so many M$ users (present company excepted) defend their
choice by pointing to the success of M$ as a company rather than being
able to rationally discuss the pros and cons of Windows (all variants)
as a stable and secure OS? The following is a typical example.

I am in the process of assisting with a staged migration of a legal
practice's system from you-know-what to the One True OS and, today, got
hijacked by their Office Manager whilst enjoying lunch in their office
canteen.
Despite the fact that the partners had made the decision to go ahead
with the migration (and that decision is irrevocable); despite the fact
that they would save money; despite  the fact that they would be
considerably more secure and resilient, this idiot decided to fight a
rearguard action with _me_ using M$'s business success as an indicator
of the strength of their OS. I suppose he chose me as messenger rather
than face up to those who pay his salary but FGS why not at least use
examples of where Windows gets it right.
It was impossible to get him to listen to any rational reasoning because
each time I raised a point, back came the pat retort that M$ was now one
of the biggest and most powerful corporations in the world. In the end I
gave up and to my shame left him with the retort that the Nazi party was
the biggest political organisation in Germany in the thirties but that
didn't make them a force for good.

I suspect I may have made an enemy.

John
(listening to Enya's Memory Of Trees to calm himself down)

-- 
I will be brief but not nearly so brief as Salvador Dali, who gave the
world's shortest speech. He said, "I will be so brief I am already
finished," then he sat down.

Post a reply to this message

Doctor John wrote:
> Why is it that so many M$ users (present company excepted) defend their
> choice by pointing to the success of M$ as a company rather than being
> able to rationally discuss the pros and cons of Windows (all variants)
> as a stable and secure OS? 

Because non-technical people don't know about that stuff. They just know 
that it can't be *too* bad if that many people are using it.  I.e., they 
look at the users, and trust the opinion of those who most got it right.

It's not science, it's politics.

> with the migration (and that decision is irrevocable)

It's a transition, not a migration. A migration returns again next year 
to where they started. ;-)

[I had a boss that was almost as anal about that word as Warp is about 
cut&paste. ;-]

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     "That's pretty. Where's that?"
          "It's the Age of Channelwood."
     "We should go there on vacation some time."

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:
> 
> Because non-technical people don't know about that stuff. They just know 
> that it can't be *too* bad if that many people are using it.  I.e., they 
> look at the users, and trust the opinion of those who most got it right.
> 
> It's not science, it's politics.
> 

Practically 100% of people talk bs every once in a while, so it can't be 
too bad.

:p

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

Post a reply to this message

Doctor John <doc### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
> Why is it that so many M$ users (present company excepted) defend their
> choice by pointing to the success of M$ as a company rather than being
> able to rationally discuss the pros and cons of Windows (all variants)
> as a stable and secure OS?

  I have never understood and will probably never understand this:

  "Hey, we have all this super-secret data and documents which are
absolutely vital to the survival of our company. Let's make ourselves
completely dependent on the software, proprietary formats and restrictive
licenses of a third-party company who we have absolutely no guarantees
about and who could one day change any software and licensing to anything
they want on a whim. Let's also use their OS which is infamously known
for the vast amount of devastating malware in our absolutely critical
systems instead of using some other OS with little or no malware at all."

  Nothing becomes "industry standard" unless the industry adopts it as
a whole. The industry is completely stupid, IMO.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote:
> Doctor John <doc### [at] gmailcom> wrote:
>> Why is it that so many M$ users (present company excepted) defend their
>> choice by pointing to the success of M$ as a company rather than being
>> able to rationally discuss the pros and cons of Windows (all variants)
>> as a stable and secure OS?
> 
>   I have never understood and will probably never understand this:
> 
>   "Hey, we have all this super-secret data and documents which are
> absolutely vital to the survival of our company. Let's make ourselves
> completely dependent on the software, proprietary formats and restrictive
> licenses of a third-party company who we have absolutely no guarantees
> about and who could one day change any software and licensing to anything
> they want on a whim. Let's also use their OS which is infamously known
> for the vast amount of devastating malware in our absolutely critical
> systems instead of using some other OS with little or no malware at all."
> 

At least the Partners were intelligent enough to understand the problem
with the above mindset. Why they employ a moron as their Office Manager
is beyond me. OTOH maybe that's the sort of people you need for such a
boring task ;-) (apologies to any OMs amongst us)

John

-- 
I will be brief but not nearly so brief as Salvador Dali, who gave the
world's shortest speech. He said, "I will be so brief I am already
finished," then he sat down.

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote:
> completely dependent on the software, proprietary formats and restrictive
> licenses of a third-party company who we have absolutely no guarantees
> about and who could one day change any software and licensing to anything
> they want on a whim.

Sure. And tomorrow, the government might pass a law saying that what 
you're doing is illegal or heavily taxed. It's just a calculated risk. 
Betting that you'll be able to get your data out of Microsoft format 
faster than Microsoft implodes is probably not a bad bet, business-wise. 
No worse than buying equipment from a company that could be bankrupt and 
no longer making parts to repair it the next day - Actually quite the 
same thing, really.

Now, using Windows for something like military operations or running a 
space ship or something is IMO a horribly stupid idea.

But if it's just money? Sure. People make those sorts of decisions 
wisely every day. They're betting on business inertia, that MS isn't 
going to go bankrupt without a whole lot of people knowing well in 
advance. They're also betting that Microsoft wouldn't be a huge 
successful software company without learning how not to change their 
licensing at a whim to prevent everyone using their software from 
continuing to use their software, for example.

Plus, of course, formats change. You can have the most open format in 
the world stored on 9-track tape, and you're going to have a heck of a 
time reading it back in 2020. Moving away from Microsoft formats isn't 
going to be a whole lot different than moving away from punched cards.

When you think about it, in *this* respect, the fact that MS *is* 
monopolistic is a good thing, in much the same way that smugglers can 
offer better prices on their wares. :-)

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     "That's pretty. Where's that?"
          "It's the Age of Channelwood."
     "We should go there on vacation some time."

Post a reply to this message

>  "Hey, we have all this super-secret data and documents which are
> absolutely vital to the survival of our company. Let's make ourselves
> completely dependent on the software, proprietary formats and restrictive
> licenses of a third-party company who we have absolutely no guarantees
> about and who could one day change any software and licensing to anything
> they want on a whim.

I would far rather trust MS with that than a group of voluntary workers.  MS 
has a brand name to protect and shareholders to please, they are not going 
to do anything stupid.  On the other hand, one day the main developers may 
decide they don't have enough time to continue with some open source 
project, or the community might lose interest, etc.  From a business POV MS 
is far safer bet for the long run.

Post a reply to this message

scott <sco### [at] laptopcom> wrote:
> I would far rather trust MS with that than a group of voluntary workers.  MS 
> has a brand name to protect and shareholders to please, they are not going 
> to do anything stupid.  On the other hand, one day the main developers may 
> decide they don't have enough time to continue with some open source 
> project, or the community might lose interest, etc.  From a business POV MS 
> is far safer bet for the long run.

  You don't understand. MS may one day decide that they want an annual
fee for every Word document a company has in their computers, and they
may get away with it. That's because the format is closed, proprietary
and owned by MS. An open source project just cannot do that. The open
source project does not own the format and thus cannot impose any fees
on it.

  As for stopping developement, have you ever heard of people having
problems importing old Word documents into newer versions of the program?
I have.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

>  You don't understand. MS may one day decide that they want an annual
> fee for every Word document a company has in their computers, and they
> may get away with it.

Sure, but they'll only get away with it if it is a trivially small amount to 
most customers.  Otherwise people would stop using it and MS would lose 
market share and profit.  Of course the shareholders know this so they would 
never let such a thing happen.

That's the protection you have using MS products, you know that there are a 
large number of people with very large financial interests in how the 
company performs, not just a passing technical interest in the code of 
certain progams.

> That's because the format is closed, proprietary
> and owned by MS. An open source project just cannot do that. The open
> source project does not own the format and thus cannot impose any fees
> on it.

Sure, but that risk is pretty small as mentioned above.  The far greater 
risk is that development/support becomes very slow or stops altogether, 
because nobody has any financial interest in the project.

I've seen it happen so often, where developers get distracted by other 
things (both in the software world and IRL), development goes very slowly, 
and then finally development is stopped.  Because they have no financial 
incentive to continue development, there is absolutely nothing stopping them 
just leaving one day.  That would be impossible to happen at MS.

>  As for stopping developement, have you ever heard of people having
> problems importing old Word documents into newer versions of the program?
> I have.

Very occasionally yes, but usually it's because they haven't installed the 
right filters to read them.    Have you ever heard of an open source project 
essentially dying because nobody is developing it?  I have.

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote:

>   You don't understand. MS may one day decide that they want an annual
> fee for every Word document a company has in their computers, and they
> may get away with it. That's because the format is closed, proprietary
> and owned by MS. An open source project just cannot do that. The open
> source project does not own the format and thus cannot impose any fees
> on it.

 From what I've seen this doesn't seem to be the direction MS is going.

I'm sort of fond of MS products. Especially their software development 
offerings. I'm impressed that they basically give for free a 
full-fledged IDE. (I've now seen the professional edition of the 2008 
tools, aside from having heterogeneous projects, some extra refactoring 
and testing stuff, everything's the same (Visual C++ is a big exception 
to this, since VC++ Express does not include MFC nor ATL)

The newer Word format is supposedly more open. It's an XML-based format, 
IIRC. I dunno what sort of proprietary stuff they've crammed into it, 
though.

Windows became notorious during the 3.1 and 95 days. One of the reasons 
for so many exploits on the Windows platform is by creating an exploit, 
you're pretty much guaranteed to cause the most damage, or get the most 
data, or spambot the most computers by targeting Windows. With Linux you 
have a much slimmer chance due to several factors, notably it's relative 
small share in the desktop market, and its users tend to be more 
technically adept. Much easier to compromise a Windows machine without 
the user noticing anything has been compromised, whereas with Linux, the 
user might actually investigate what's taking up resources.

People complain that Windows is unstable. This was true up to ME. After 
Windows XP hit the market, the NT Kernel went mainstream, and Windows 
has been extremely stable ever since. Aside from running updates, My 
Windows XP (Now Windows Vista) machine hardly ever has any down time. 
Heck, With Windows 95, I was pretty well guaranteed to have a bluescreen 
at some point. Windows 3.1 I avoided like the black plague, only running 
it when I couldn't find a DOS alternative. Win 3.1 sucked badly. I still 
get chills when I see that old interface.

Post a reply to this message

Mike Raiford wrote:

> The newer Word format is supposedly more open. It's an XML-based format, 
> IIRC. I dunno what sort of proprietary stuff they've crammed into it, 
> though.

How about deliberately defining it in such a way that only Word itself 
can really "understand" what its content means?

XML is no magic bullet for instant portability...

> People complain that Windows is unstable. This was true up to ME. After 
> Windows XP hit the market, the NT Kernel went mainstream, and Windows 
> has been extremely stable ever since.

When XP first came out, it required insane amounts of resources and was 
hopelessly unstable. Over time they seem to have somehow fixed the 
stability issues; today XP is pretty stable. And... well, hardware as 
advanced so much that nobody *even notices* how much XP is wasting them.

Now look at Vista. I'm anticipating the same story all over again. Right 
now, you'd be insane to use Vista. It's just too flaky, and it's too 
expensive to construct a machine that's sufficiently high-end to run it 
even moderately well. Maybe in another 10 years it'll be OK...

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

Post a reply to this message

Darren New wrote:
<snip>
> No worse than buying equipment from a company that could be bankrupt and
> no longer making parts to repair it the next day - Actually quite the
> same thing, really.
> 
Generally, reverse engineering mechanical hardware is easier than
reverse engineering M$ software especially since patents for the m.h.
will contain a full set of drawings showing how the item is machined and
constructed. My problem with M$ software is the deliberate obfuscation
and secrecy that surrounds the source code. If BG took the unlikely step
of releasing all M$ s.c. with its original comments I'd be a lot happier.

> Now, using Windows for something like military operations or running a
> space ship or something is IMO a horribly stupid idea.
> 
:-) no comment

> But if it's just money? Sure. People make those sorts of decisions
> wisely every day. They're betting on business inertia, that MS isn't
> going to go bankrupt without a whole lot of people knowing well in
> advance. They're also betting that Microsoft wouldn't be a huge
> successful software company without learning how not to change their
> licensing at a whim to prevent everyone using their software from
> continuing to use their software, for example.
> 
The particular case that I used is a law firm. It's not just money, it's
people's lives and livelihoods.

> Plus, of course, formats change. You can have the most open format in
> the world stored on 9-track tape, and you're going to have a heck of a
> time reading it back in 2020. Moving away from Microsoft formats isn't
> going to be a whole lot different than moving away from punched cards.
> 
Sorry. Not a valid argument. You've confused physical format with coded
format.

> When you think about it, in *this* respect, the fact that MS *is*
> monopolistic is a good thing, in much the same way that smugglers can
> offer better prices on their wares. :-)
> 
ROTFLMAO. When M$ lowers its prices to those charged by the
GNU/Linux/FSF community then I'll agree with you. M$ prices are higher
than they need be _because_ it is a near monopoly. (Note: I am not
suggesting they should give their products away - everybody's got to
eat.) Using your analogy of smugglers, right now M$ is offering vin de
pays at champagne prices (plus FUD tax) and the man in the street is
buying because he's been told (by M$) that the vintage wine that my lot
is selling is worthless because you need to be a master sommelier just
to drink it and it can't be that good anyway since it doesn't cost as
much as theirs.

Finally, back to the majority point - I run and recommend Linux because
80% of the world's supercomputers run on it. The other 20% sure as hell
don't use M$.

John
-- 
I will be brief but not nearly so brief as Salvador Dali, who gave the
world's shortest speech. He said, "I will be so brief I am already
finished," then he sat down.

Post a reply to this message

"Invisible" <voi### [at] devnull> a écrit dans le message de news: 
47f0eec5@news.povray.org...
> Now look at Vista. I'm anticipating the same story all over again. Right 
> now, you'd be insane to use Vista. It's just too flaky, and it's too 
> expensive to construct a machine that's sufficiently high-end to run it 
> even moderately well. Maybe in another 10 years it'll be OK...

Hey, shouldn't your other nickname be Orchid Vista SP1 now, rather than 
Orchid XP V8 ;)
And when did you get patched anyway?

G.

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

Post a reply to this message

Doctor John wrote:

> right now M$ is offering vin de
> pays at champagne prices (plus FUD tax) and the man in the street is
> buying because he's been told (by M$) that the vintage wine that my lot
> is selling is worthless because you need to be a master sommelier just
> to drink it and it can't be that good anyway since it doesn't cost as
> much as theirs.

Agreed. Annoying, isn't it?

> Finally, back to the majority point - I run and recommend Linux because
> 80% of the world's supercomputers run on it. The other 20% sure as hell
> don't use M$.

How many people use a supercomputer to read their email? ;-)

[Depending on your definition of "supercomputer". Compared to the 
Commodore 64 that I started out with, the dual-core multi-GHz thing I 
have at home probably *seems* like a damn supercomputer!]

The best software for running a supercomputer is *not* necessarily the 
best software for running a desktop. I'm not saying Linux isn't good, 
I'm saying this particular snippet of logic is flawed.

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

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Gilles Tran wrote:

> Hey, shouldn't your other nickname be Orchid Vista SP1 now, rather than 
> Orchid XP V8 ;)
> And when did you get patched anyway?

The more observant amoung you will notice that it *was* v7 until a few 
days ago.

What can I say? I tried to install a piece of software so large it comes 
on 12 DVDs. It didn't fit. So I bought a new HD and reinstalled everything.

Did you ever hear "Microsoft Jinglebells"?

Nine tenths of a gig,
Biggest ever seen,
GOD this program's big,
MS Word fifteen.
Comes on TEN CDs!
And requires DANM!
Word is fine but GEES,
SIXTY MEGS OF RAM?!
Oh Microsoft, Microsoft, joker all the way,
I've sat here installing Word since breakfast yesterday!
Oh Microsoft, Microsoft, moderation PLEASE!
In case you hadn't noticed...
...FOUR GIG DRIVES DON'T GROW ON TREES!

Seems kinda quaint now, doesn't it? 60 MB of RAM? Are you kidding? The 
*cache* of my new harddrive is 32 MB! But you're right about 4 GB HDs: 
they're pretty rare now. Unless they're solid-state.

But even M$ hasn't [yet] produced a product that really does come on 12 
DVDs...

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

Post a reply to this message

Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> Now look at Vista. I'm anticipating the same story all over again. Right 
> now, you'd be insane to use Vista. It's just too flaky, and it's too 
> expensive to construct a machine that's sufficiently high-end to run it 
> even moderately well. Maybe in another 10 years it'll be OK...

  I think this is a good article about the subject:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/09/business/09digi.html?_r=2&pagewanted=all&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

Invisible wrote:
> Doctor John wrote:
> 
>> right now M$ is offering vin de
>> pays at champagne prices (plus FUD tax) and the man in the street is
>> buying because he's been told (by M$) that the vintage wine that my lot
>> is selling is worthless because you need to be a master sommelier just
>> to drink it and it can't be that good anyway since it doesn't cost as
>> much as theirs.
> 
> Agreed. Annoying, isn't it?
> 
>> Finally, back to the majority point - I run and recommend Linux because
>> 80% of the world's supercomputers run on it. The other 20% sure as hell
>> don't use M$.
> 
> How many people use a supercomputer to read their email? ;-)

I was speaking ironically. Shoulda used <irony> tags. ;-)
The reason I use and recommend Linux is because it's stable, secure and
open source.

John

-- 
I will be brief but not nearly so brief as Salvador Dali, who gave the
world's shortest speech. He said, "I will be so brief I am already
finished," then he sat down.

Post a reply to this message

Invisible wrote:
> Mike Raiford wrote:
> 
>> The newer Word format is supposedly more open. It's an XML-based 
>> format, IIRC. I dunno what sort of proprietary stuff they've crammed 
>> into it, though.
> 
> How about deliberately defining it in such a way that only Word itself 
> can really "understand" what its content means?
> 
> XML is no magic bullet for instant portability...
> 

Yup. Our company makes lots of XML files that only our company's 
products intend to understand. Same for competitors and other vendors, 
too. Gets real fun when you try to import someone else's XML. Yeah, it 
parses perfectly, but you have no clue what the semantics of the file 
should be.

> Now look at Vista. I'm anticipating the same story all over again. Right 
> now, you'd be insane to use Vista. It's just too flaky, and it's too 
> expensive to construct a machine that's sufficiently high-end to run it 
> even moderately well. Maybe in another 10 years it'll be OK...

And yet, I run Vista (Home Premium, even!) on a rather moderate machine. 
  2.6 P4, 200GB harddrive, and 2.5G ram. It runs rather smoothly, 
actually. I didn't notice any considerable performance drop from WinXP 
to Vista.

Post a reply to this message

>> How many people use a supercomputer to read their email? ;-)
> 
> I was speaking ironically. Shoulda used <irony> tags. ;-)
> The reason I use and recommend Linux is because it's stable, secure and
> open source.

Just last night, one of my clanmates said to me "Invisible, if you hate 
Microsoft so much, why do you use their products?"

I thought that was especially amusing, given that at that exact moment 
both of us were playing CSS - a game which exists only on the Windoze 
platform... [Although amusingly the game *server* runs on Linux too. 
Good luck configuring it...]

I'd use Linux too if I could. But it's just too difficult. And most of 
the software I want to use doesn't exist for Linux. And that is why most 
people end up being stuck with Windoze; it's where all the software is.

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

Post a reply to this message

>> XML is no magic bullet for instant portability...
> 
> Yup. Our company makes lots of XML files that only our company's 
> products intend to understand. Same for competitors and other vendors, 
> too. Gets real fun when you try to import someone else's XML. Yeah, it 
> parses perfectly, but you have no clue what the semantics of the file 
> should be.

Depending on how well the schema is designed, it might be quite easy to 
comprehend.

Or not...

 From what little I know, the M$ XML format uses things like bitmaps and 
so forth to represent things. [Because that's how their codebase worked 
before they ported it to XML, and it's simpler to leave it that way than 
use a truly "open" arrangement like, say, using attributes or tags or 
something...]

>> Now look at Vista. I'm anticipating the same story all over again. 
>> Right now, you'd be insane to use Vista. It's just too flaky, and it's 
>> too expensive to construct a machine that's sufficiently high-end to 
>> run it even moderately well. Maybe in another 10 years it'll be OK...
> 
> And yet, I run Vista (Home Premium, even!) on a rather moderate machine. 
>  2.6 P4, 200GB harddrive, and 2.5G ram. It runs rather smoothly, 
> actually. I didn't notice any considerable performance drop from WinXP 
> to Vista.

In which universe is a machine with a 200 GB HD and more than 1 GB of 
RAM considered "moderate"? That sounds pretty high-end to me...

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

Post a reply to this message

Invisible wrote:
> 
> I'd use Linux too if I could. But it's just too difficult.
This from the man who's writing his own logic prog lang

> the software I want to use doesn't exist for Linux. And that is why most
> people end up being stuck with Windoze; it's where all the software is.
> 
Yup, have to admit I do have XP on a couple of machines purely for
Flight Sims, a couple of games and Daz3d, Bryce and Hexagon.

John

-- 
I will be brief but not nearly so brief as Salvador Dali, who gave the
world's shortest speech. He said, "I will be so brief I am already
finished," then he sat down.

Post a reply to this message

>> I'd use Linux too if I could. But it's just too difficult.

> This from the man who's writing his own logic prog lang

Hey, do *you* know how to make Linux recognise the fact that I just 
plugged in a USB sound card and that sound should be routed through that 
instead?

Similarly, do you know how to edit /etc/X11/Xconfig because you just 
changed your video card and now X11 crashes on startup?

[The nice thing about SuSE's configuration program is that it will works 
even if X11 isn't running...]

>> the software I want to use doesn't exist for Linux. And that is why most
>> people end up being stuck with Windoze; it's where all the software is.
>>
> Yup, have to admit I do have XP on a couple of machines purely for
> Flight Sims, a couple of games and Daz3d, Bryce and Hexagon.

This is also what really keeps me from trying a Mac. I'd basically have 
to throw all my software away - and what's the point of that?

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

Post a reply to this message

Invisible wrote:
>>> I'd use Linux too if I could. But it's just too difficult.
> 
>> This from the man who's writing his own logic prog lang
> 
> Hey, do *you* know how to make Linux recognise the fact that I just
> plugged in a USB sound card and that sound should be routed through that
> instead?
> 
Never tried 'cos I've never needed to

> Similarly, do you know how to edit /etc/X11/Xconfig because you just
> changed your video card and now X11 crashes on startup?
> 
<irony> Back when Queen Victoria was a lad</irony> that is the way we
all did it. If I've made any hardware changes I invariably boot into
runlevel 3 then startx; if all looks good fine else fire up vi and away
we go.

> [The nice thing about SuSE's configuration program is that it will works
> even if X11 isn't running...]
> 
Haven't used a distro's config for a few years now. Call me a dinosaur
but at least if anything goes wrong I know what I did so I can reverse it.

John

-- 
I will be brief but not nearly so brief as Salvador Dali, who gave the
world's shortest speech. He said, "I will be so brief I am already
finished," then he sat down.

Post a reply to this message

Invisible escribió:
> I thought that was especially amusing, given that at that exact moment 
> both of us were playing CSS - a game which exists only on the Windoze 
> platform...

Wine AppDB lists "Counter-Strike: Source Retail / Steam" in the top-10 
platinum list ("Applications which install and run flawlessly on an 
out-of-the-box Wine installation").

Post a reply to this message

Mike Raiford escribió:
> The newer Word format is supposedly more open. It's an XML-based format, 
> IIRC. I dunno what sort of proprietary stuff they've crammed into it, 
> though.

It's a direct dump of the binary format internal structure into XML. 
When you see a tag called <useWord97LineBreaks>, what should your 
implementation do?

Post a reply to this message

> Wine AppDB lists "Counter-Strike: Source Retail / Steam" in the top-10 
> platinum list ("Applications which install and run flawlessly on an 
> out-of-the-box Wine installation").

*one raised eyebrow*

You're telling me a game making intense use of 3D hardware [not to 
mention CPU-intensive physics simulations] will actually work under 
software emulation?

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

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>> Similarly, do you know how to edit /etc/X11/Xconfig because you just
>> changed your video card and now X11 crashes on startup?
>>
> <irony> Back when Queen Victoria was a lad</irony> that is the way we
> all did it. If I've made any hardware changes I invariably boot into
> runlevel 3 then startx; if all looks good fine else fire up vi and away
> we go.

> Haven't used a distro's config for a few years now. Call me a dinosaur
> but at least if anything goes wrong I know what I did so I can reverse it.

Well, there are advantages to that too - but it does require you to be a 
complete expert in exactly how everything on the entire machine works in 
order to configure anything.

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

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>> And yet, I run Vista (Home Premium, even!) on a rather moderate machine. 
>> 2.6 P4, 200GB harddrive, and 2.5G ram. It runs rather smoothly, actually. 
>> I didn't notice any considerable performance drop from WinXP to Vista.
>
> In which universe is a machine with a 200 GB HD and more than 1 GB of RAM 
> considered "moderate"? That sounds pretty high-end to me...

Well not your universe obvously ;-)  In our universe on dell.co.uk you can 
get a core2duo 2.3 GHz with a 20" LCD, 2GB RAM and 320 GB HD for 529 GBP 
total.  And as you keep telling us, Dell's prices are 73x more than 
everywhere else, so I think that is a pretty moderate spec to me :-)

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>> In which universe is a machine with a 200 GB HD and more than 1 GB of 
>> RAM considered "moderate"? That sounds pretty high-end to me...
> 
> Well not your universe obvously ;-)  In our universe on dell.co.uk you 
> can get a core2duo 2.3 GHz with a 20" LCD, 2GB RAM and 320 GB HD for 529 
> GBP total.  And as you keep telling us, Dell's prices are 73x more than 
> everywhere else, so I think that is a pretty moderate spec to me :-)

Damn. In my universe, anything that says Core 2 Duo on it is likely to 
cost several hundred pounds by itself... :-(

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

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Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
> Damn. In my universe, anything that says Core 2 Duo on it is likely to 
> cost several hundred pounds by itself... :-(

  You mean like in weight?

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Warp wrote:
> Invisible <voi### [at] devnull> wrote:
>> Damn. In my universe, anything that says Core 2 Duo on it is likely to 
>> cost several hundred pounds by itself... :-(
> 
>   You mean like in weight?

Well, I've never held an Intel CPU before, but the AMD Athlon X2 I had 
the other week sure was damn heavy for such a tiny little thing...

[What's it made of? Lead??]

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

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Invisible escribió:
>> Wine AppDB lists "Counter-Strike: Source Retail / Steam" in the top-10 
>> platinum list ("Applications which install and run flawlessly on an 
>> out-of-the-box Wine installation").
> 
> *one raised eyebrow*
> 
> You're telling me a game making intense use of 3D hardware [not to 
> mention CPU-intensive physics simulations] will actually work under 
> software emulation?
> 

Software emulation???

Wine will convert the DirectX calls into OpenGL calls. (well, not 
"convert"; it just has a DirectX "library" where all functions just call 
OpenGL functions)

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"Mike Raiford" <mra### [at] hotmailcom> wrote in message
news:47f0f7bb$1@news.povray.org...
>
> And yet, I run Vista (Home Premium, even!) on a rather moderate machine.
>   2.6 P4, 200GB harddrive, and 2.5G ram. It runs rather smoothly,
> actually. I didn't notice any considerable performance drop from WinXP
> to Vista.

Vista Ultimate here on a laptop. Slightly higher spec than yours, but then I
run virtual PC and server apps on it, so it has to be. It plays games pretty
well too.

The only glitch I've had so far is when StarForce copy protection tried to
install itself. One of the 3 drivers isn't signed, so Vista refused to
install it. Would have been fine if StarForce had undone the installation
properly. As it was, I was left with 2 of the 3 drivers installed and got
dumped to the recovery console the next time the laptop booted. Only took
about 5 min to fix, once I found what the problem was.

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Doctor John wrote:
> Generally, reverse engineering mechanical hardware is easier than
> reverse engineering M$ software

You don't really have to reverse engineer it. You print it out on paper 
and look at it.

> The particular case that I used is a law firm. It's not just money, it's
> people's lives and livelihoods.

Fair enough.

> Sorry. Not a valid argument. You've confused physical format with coded
> format.

They're all coded, so I'm not sure what your point is. Formats change, 
and if you want continued access to your data, you need to periodically 
go through the pain of upgrading formats. This is true of every format.

Some formats last longer than data tends to be worth, so you really only 
see that pain when you're (say) an archeologist, but it's always there.

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     "That's pretty. Where's that?"
          "It's the Age of Channelwood."
     "We should go there on vacation some time."

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"Invisible" <voi### [at] devnull> wrote in message
news:47f0f8da@news.povray.org...

> > And yet, I run Vista (Home Premium, even!) on a rather moderate machine.
> >  2.6 P4, 200GB harddrive, and 2.5G ram. It runs rather smoothly,
> > actually. I didn't notice any considerable performance drop from WinXP
> > to Vista.
>
> In which universe is a machine with a 200 GB HD and more than 1 GB of
> RAM considered "moderate"? That sounds pretty high-end to me...

My 3+ year old desktop is slightly higher spec'ed than that.
High end today is quad core processor, 4 GB+ memory and 1/2 TB disk space.

I'm currently speccing a new desktop.
Quad core 2.4
4 GB memory
400GB HDD
8800 GT graphics card
Total price - R9500 (+-)
That's just under 600 pounds at current exchange rate.

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Invisible wrote:
> How many people use a supercomputer to read their email? ;-)

Anyone using gmail? :-)

> [Depending on your definition of "supercomputer". Compared to the 
> Commodore 64 that I started out with, the dual-core multi-GHz thing I 
> have at home probably *seems* like a damn supercomputer!]

I was just thinking the other day, what kinds of computers are we 
running that not that long ago, the US considered a 486 a 
"supercomputer" enough to restrict its export to countries that might 
use it to do nuclear bomb simulations. And now there's probably an order 
of magnitude more power in the graphics chip of a game console than what 
used to be a supercomputer 15 years ago.

> The best software for running a supercomputer is *not* necessarily the 
> best software for running a desktop. I'm not saying Linux isn't good, 
> I'm saying this particular snippet of logic is flawed.

Yeah, Linux is definitely superior if what you're doing is dicking 
around with the OS.  Like Amazon's ECC or something - can't even imagine 
that being supported via Windows.

Not that Windows is great either. They just have a user base that 
expects computers to be easy to use, and a financial need to keep those 
users happy. Plus, lots of Linux weenies don't know Windows' 
capabilities and complain it doesn't work when it does. :-)

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     "That's pretty. Where's that?"
          "It's the Age of Channelwood."
     "We should go there on vacation some time."

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Warp wrote:
> That's because the format is closed, proprietary
> and owned by MS. 

Not any more. :-)

In any case, it's again a business decision. Is it more expensive to 
export everything from MS Word into some other software, or is it more 
expensive to pay MS their fees?

Pure business.

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     "That's pretty. Where's that?"
          "It's the Age of Channelwood."
     "We should go there on vacation some time."

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Invisible wrote:
> How about deliberately defining it in such a way that only Word itself 
> can really "understand" what its content means?

This is what happens when you have support for dozens of versions of a 
program in your file format. Not unlike C++.  "How about defining a 
source input format that can't be checked for syntactic correctness 
without a potentially infinite storage space?"  ;-)

> XML is no magic bullet for instant portability...

It will let you get enough of your data out that you can then import it 
into another format.

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     "That's pretty. Where's that?"
          "It's the Age of Channelwood."
     "We should go there on vacation some time."

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Darren New escribió:
> Invisible wrote:
>> How many people use a supercomputer to read their email? ;-)
> 
> Anyone using gmail? :-)

I am, but over IMAP.

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Nicolas Alvarez wrote:
> Darren New escribió:
>> Invisible wrote:
>>> How many people use a supercomputer to read their email? ;-)
>>
>> Anyone using gmail? :-)
> 
> I am, but over IMAP.

Tht was an answer, not a question. :-)

-- 
   Darren New / San Diego, CA, USA (PST)
     "That's pretty. Where's that?"
          "It's the Age of Channelwood."
     "We should go there on vacation some time."

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Darren New escribió:
> Tht was an answer, not a question. :-)
> 

You were talking about the slow-ass GMail web interface?

That's why I use IMAP. (and NNTP to get in here)

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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> This is what happens when you have support for dozens of versions of a 
> program in your file format. Not unlike C++.  "How about defining a 
> source input format that can't be checked for syntactic correctness 
> without a potentially infinite storage space?"  ;-)

  It's incredible how you find ways to bash C++ in every possible context.

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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Darren New wrote:
> Nicolas Alvarez wrote:
>> Darren New escribió:
>>> Invisible wrote:
>>>> How many people use a supercomputer to read their email? ;-)
>>>
>>> Anyone using gmail? :-)
>>
>> I am, but over IMAP.
> 
> That was an answer, not a question. :-)
> 
Yes, the question mark was a dead giveaway.

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Invisible wrote:

> In which universe is a machine with a 200 GB HD and more than 1 GB of 
> RAM considered "moderate"? That sounds pretty high-end to me...

Pff, I only have a 512MB memory graphics card, 200 GB harddrive is easy 
as possible, and even little timmy down the street has 2GB of ram. ;) 
It's actually (by todays standards) a very moderate system. Bottom of 
midrange.

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Invisible wrote:

> [What's it made of? Lead??]

Silicon, mostly. a few threads of gold, maybe a ceramic outer case, with 
  a very small possibility of a heat-conducting metal pad. :D

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Nicolas Alvarez wrote:

> It's a direct dump of the binary format internal structure into XML. 
> When you see a tag called <useWord97LineBreaks>, what should your 
> implementation do?

I would assume you would need to know what the behavior difference in a 
Word97 linebreak versus a normal line break.

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>> *one raised eyebrow*
>>
>> You're telling me a game making intense use of 3D hardware [not to 
>> mention CPU-intensive physics simulations] will actually work under 
>> software emulation?
>>
> 
> Software emulation???
> 
> Wine will convert the DirectX calls into OpenGL calls. (well, not 
> "convert"; it just has a DirectX "library" where all functions just call 
> OpenGL functions)

Wait - Wine attempts to perform emulation at the API level?

Damn, that's even harder than hardware emulation! o_O [At least the 
hardware is mostly documented somewhere...]

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Darren New wrote:
> Invisible wrote:
>> How many people use a supercomputer to read their email? ;-)
> 
> Anyone using gmail? :-)

No - what is it?

[NO! I'M KIDDING THIS TIME!!]

That's using a supercomputer - or more accurately, an entire cluster of 
perfectly ordinary computers - to *store* your email, not read it.

> I was just thinking the other day, what kinds of computers are we 
> running that not that long ago, the US considered a 486 a 
> "supercomputer" enough to restrict its export to countries that might 
> use it to do nuclear bomb simulations. And now there's probably an order 
> of magnitude more power in the graphics chip of a game console than what 
> used to be a supercomputer 15 years ago.

Pretty mental, eh?

Wanna speculate how many FLOPS you can get out of a Commodore 64? Since 
it has a 1 MHz clock and typically takes around 4 clock cycles per 
instruction, and all float processing has to be done in software, I'm 
thinking were somewhere in the kFLOPS range?

What does, say, an Intel Xeon 3.66 GHz generate? How about a 
top-of-the-line nVidia GeForce GPU? (I know it's MFLOPS, but I couldn't 
tell you how many exactly...)

> Not that Windows is great either. They just have a user base that 
> expects computers to be easy to use, and a financial need to keep those 
> users happy. Plus, lots of Linux weenies don't know Windows' 
> capabilities and complain it doesn't work when it does. :-)

I still contend that AmigaDOS was easier than any version of Windoze 
I've ever touched. But I'm minority like that...

[Perhaps somebody will claim Mac OS X is the way to go?]

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>> In which universe is a machine with a 200 GB HD and more than 1 GB of
>> RAM considered "moderate"? That sounds pretty high-end to me...
> 
> My 3+ year old desktop is slightly higher spec'ed than that.
> High end today is quad core processor, 4 GB+ memory and 1/2 TB disk space.

Damn - what on earth could you possibly use 1 TB of disk for?? o_O

I only know 1 person who has nearly that much space - and he uses it for 
illegal media downloads. (Not something I do, obviously.)

My current motherboard doesn't even *support* more than 4 GB of RAM. 
Although I guess RAM is much cheaper now than it used to be.

Dual-core is becomming common, but I don't think I've met anybody yet 
who can afford quad-core. (Since that almost necessarily requires you to 
buy Intel, who are still quite expensive.)

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Warp wrote:

>   It's incredible how you find ways to bash C++ in every possible context.

The human mind is a truly increadible thing. Maybe one day we'll figure 
out how it works...

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