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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*
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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.
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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
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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*
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Invisible <voi### [at] dev null> 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
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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.
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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.
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>> 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*
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>> 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*
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