Linux-Advocacy Digest #185, Volume #34 Fri, 4 May 01 12:13:05 EDT
Contents:
Re: Justice Department LOVES Microsoft! ("Daniel Johnson")
Re: Another Windows pc gets Linux (The Ghost In The Machine)
Re: IE ("Ayende Rahien")
Re: Justice Department LOVES Microsoft! ("Daniel Johnson")
Re: Justice Department LOVES Microsoft! ("Daniel Johnson")
Re: Justice Department LOVES Microsoft! ("Daniel Johnson")
Re: Linux advocacy or Windows bashing? ("Mikkel Elmholdt")
Re: Justice Department LOVES Microsoft! ("Daniel Johnson")
Re: Another Windows pc gets Linux (The Ghost In The Machine)
Re: Justice Department LOVES Microsoft! ("Daniel Johnson")
Re: Justice Department LOVES Microsoft! ("Daniel Johnson")
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: "Daniel Johnson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To:
comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy,comp.sys.mac.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy
Subject: Re: Justice Department LOVES Microsoft!
Date: Fri, 04 May 2001 15:10:11 GMT
"Aaron R. Kulkis" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> Daniel Johnson wrote:
> > > Self-fulfilling prophecy.
> > > By the way, signing contract to EXCLUDE other vendors is illegal.
> >
> > Nobody is claiming MS did this, you know. Even
> > you have not, not that I've seen.
>
> You are a retard. The per-processor licensing fees ARE restraint
> of trade, you idiot.
You say that, but you don't say they excluded anyone- nobody
is saying that.
> Mafia$oft was found GUILTY! GUILTY! GUILTY!
Nobody has every conviced Microsoft of "per processor
licensing".
The recent farce was about bundling a browser with the OS.
> That's why they signed a consent decree....and then went out and
> did it again....with "per-system" licensing fees.
You mean not realise this, but the point of signing a consent
decree is often to avoid the whole "GUILTY! GUILTY! GUILTY!"
thing.
> And again, they were found GUILTY! GUILTY! GUILTY!
Yes, but of putting too many features in their OS, not of
restraint of trade as you seem to understand the concept.
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (The Ghost In The Machine)
Subject: Re: Another Windows pc gets Linux
Date: Fri, 04 May 2001 15:07:16 GMT
In comp.os.linux.advocacy, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote
on 04 May 2001 20:09:02 +0800
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
>>>>>> "The" == The Ghost In The Machine <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>
> The> Contrariwise, Word is extremely good at being a
> The> quasi-standard format.
>
>It's "good"... until you discover that:
I did say "quasi-". :-)
>
>1. It changes (gets repaginated) whenever a person open it. The
> repagination result would differ according to that person's printer
> settings, page settings, margin settings, set of installed fonts,
> etc.
>2. Even when you just open it for reading, those stupid features such
> as Auto-Corrupt (misnamed in Word as "auto-correct") would always
> change the document as you wander around the document with cursor
> movement keys.
>
>So, these are good "features"?
For sufficiently weird definitions of the term "good", perhaps.
I'd prefer HTML, Postscript (as you suggest), SGML, or even
just good old-fashioned ASCII. (Note that HTML doesn't have
built-in pagination.)
I cut and pasted a Word diagram at one point from a co-worker's
presentation (I was using the same code, so why not?) and all
the fonts mutated, exactly as you describe above. It was a pain
to fix.
>
>I'd prefer Postscript. It's platform independent, device independent
>(if generated properly), WYSIWYG with Postscript previewers such as
>gv, Gsview, won't change each time it is opened, won't change as you
>browse around it, can be manipulated (printing 4-on-1, selecting pages
>from it as saving these pages into a new file, including selected
>pages into another document using the EPS format), and many other
>advantages.
A good case. It's also text -- which makes it a little easier to
debug, if one needs to do so. (One drawback is that a number of
programs individually position each Postscript character, making
reconstruction of the original document's actual text difficult -- but
this usually isn't a big issue.)
>
>Yes, most PC's don't come with a Postscript viewer installed. But as
>long as there are *free* postscript viewers (ghostscript, with
>gv/ghostview and Gsview frontends) freely downloadable from the
>Internet, can't Postscript be made the standard?
>
>If people can say "This page is best viewed with IE/Netscape browser;
>download these FREE (=$0) browsers [here]" when they write documents,
>why can't we do the same for documents? "This document is best viewed
>with GNU ghostscript; download it freely from
>http://www.ghostscript.org/ AND REDISTRIBUTE it at will"?
Note that a fair number of documents online are in fact .PDF files,
which can also be read by ghostscript (if I'm not mistaken) and xpdf
(which may in fact use ghostscript for the heavy lifting). I don't know
what the differences are between .PDF and pure Postscript, though.
I know one of them is encryption support -- which has now been
added to xpdf.
There's a similar effort with the "ANY BROWSER": "This document is
best viewed with any browser". (I'm not sure who's sponsoring that
offhand -- probably Lynx.)
>
>
> The> LyX uses TeX or LaTeX, which is
> The> actually a standard,
>
>LyX designers are very clever here. Rather than re-inventing the
>wheel, they take what has been working well (robust, proven, elegant,
>pretty output) for a decade or two.
It does work very well, apart from the occasional glitch with such
things as 'epsilon' (probably because there's no character for it
in the standard X fonts). Extremely minor, really.
And it's the best equation typesetter I've seen personally. I can't
say I've used that many, though (FrameMaker tries, but isn't that good;
I've not used Word's). I'm referring to TeX's equation typesetter,
admittedly -- LyX's GUI for it is adequate, but has some minor problems
with cursor motion. Of course, one can always go to TeX's text input and
edit it onself, as required, with a text editor such as vi.
Try that with Word.... :-)
>
>
> The> but no one outside of academia knows it
> The> yet. :-)
>
>No one except computer scientists knew what the "Internet" was 10
>years ago. (A bit exaggerated.)
>
>No one except Bell know what a telephone was...
True, true. I suspect the Internet will simply be another cable option
in a few years. Or perhaps telephone. Perhaps both.
(Side point: a standard NTSC TV signal takes 6 Mhz in bandwidth,
with a few tricks such as vestigial sideband, basically lopping off
half the bandwith (which isn't needed, really). Presumably, that
maps into about 12 Mb/s without compression (?) -- and compression for
video is actually quite good. But we're not there yet, and HDTV
will up the ante, as it has higher resolution. Long term, though,
there will be some very interesting options. Pricey, I suspect,
but interesting nonetheless.)
[.sigsnip]
--
[EMAIL PROTECTED] -- insert random misquote here
EAC code #191 4d:20h:17m actually running Linux.
Linux. When Microsoft isn't enough anymore.
------------------------------
From: "Ayende Rahien" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: alt.linux,alt.destroy.microsoft
Subject: Re: IE
Date: Fri, 4 May 2001 17:56:06 +0200
"T. Max Devlin" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> Said Michael Pye in alt.destroy.microsoft on Wed, 2 May 2001 16:31:41
> >"T. Max Devlin" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote
> >
> >> I'm sorry, there is a rather large amount of doubt there, as far as I
> >> can determine. It is undoubtedly a better *platform*, since Netscape
> >> isn't a platform, but a browser. As a browser, I have never seen
> >> anything suck as much as IE, simply because it is not a browser, but a
> >> platform.
> >
> >A valid point. But an interpreter of HTML pages including CSS and
> >Javascript, I have never seen anything suck as much as NS4...
>
> Works fine for me, better than any alternative.
Try reading alt.netscape.buggy-products posts, then.
> >> Netscape 4 is MUCH closer to ALL of those requirements; IE can't hold a
> >> candle to it. You don't notice the lack of performance or incredible
> >> resource use of IE, because the bulk of it is bolted into the OS, so it
> >> doesn't look like "the browser". Of course, this just makes the OS
> >> slower and more piggish and unreliable, but that's a different
> >> discussion.
> >
> >Indeed. But it when it comes down to it, when using windows it makes
sense
> >to use IE because on that platform it is faster and displays pages
better...
>
> Using IE causes the computer to behave unpredictably; Netscape just
> crashes. That's what counts to me: I don't use the Internet because it
> is fast, and NS displays pages just fine, and far more reliably.
Not on my machine.
A> IE *rarely* crashes. One in a blue moon.
B> IE going down merely mean that IE going down. Not the shell.
C> On the odd chance that IE takes the shell, it will restart itself.
D> Logging off & on always fix the problem with the taskbar losing it's
icons.
E> Don't use 9x products.
------------------------------
From: "Daniel Johnson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To:
comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy,comp.sys.mac.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy
Subject: Re: Justice Department LOVES Microsoft!
Date: Fri, 04 May 2001 15:09:29 GMT
"Aaron R. Kulkis" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> Daniel Johnson wrote:
> > "Aaron R. Kulkis" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
> > news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> > > Try getting a university education in Computer Science,
> > > Electrical Engineering, or Computer Systems Engineering.
> >
> > Got one already. A BSCS from Rensselaer Polytechnic.
>
> You must be a minority, then. Nobody as stupid as you could graduate
> with a BSCS unless you are a member of some political "victim" group.
No, no, I'm your basic white male nerdy type. Scandinavian
descent. I'm even politically conservative.
Anyway, CS is easy. The philosophy courses were the tough
ones.
------------------------------
From: "Daniel Johnson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To:
comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy,comp.sys.mac.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy
Subject: Re: Justice Department LOVES Microsoft!
Date: Fri, 04 May 2001 15:09:36 GMT
"Aaron R. Kulkis" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> Daniel Johnson wrote:
> > That's true, I was never again good with a piano.
>
> Tell you what, Daniel...
>
> How about I get a job at Microsoft, and then come visit you,
> and blow your fucking head off.
You? Get a job at Microsoft?
I think that most unlikely.
> Hey, it's illegal as all hell, but as long as it's an action
> done by someone from Microsoft, it's ok, .... RIGHT!
I confess I find this change of position on your
part a little, um, confusing.
I must admit that I question it's sincerity.
------------------------------
From: "Daniel Johnson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To:
comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy,comp.sys.mac.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy
Subject: Re: Justice Department LOVES Microsoft!
Date: Fri, 04 May 2001 15:09:57 GMT
"Aaron R. Kulkis" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> Daniel Johnson wrote:
> > Oh yes. Most of the stuff DOS does, you'd
> > use DOS for.
>
> So does Windows. Remove "Command.com" from a Windows 1.0, 2.0, 3.1, 3.11,
> 95, or 98 system, and tell us what happens.
Command.com is a shell. It's like /bin/sh in Unix. This
doesn't mean Unix "runs on" /bin/sh.
Windows still uses DOS for a few things- for instance,
I believe it still thunks down into DOS to access the
current date/time.
So when you say Windows "runs on" DOS, there is
some truth to that. It may not "run on" very *much*
DOS, but even a little DOS is still pure real mode pain.
But the big things- file system access, memory management,
keyboard access, device access- those are all in Windows
now.
We're not *quite* out of the woods, but we are close.
[snip]
> > > Which is what we were telling you Mafia$oft droids 15 years ago.
> >
> > I think it's clear from Microsoft's actions that *they*,
> > at least, knew it was true.
>
> In other words, they have been LYING...and suckers like you believed them.
No, at that time Microsoft was saying OS/2 was the future. I think
they believed it at the time.
> This is called FRAUD.
No, they were just mistaken about the prospects of
their joint venture with IBM.
> Why do you defend a company which has DEFRAUDED YOU?
'Twas an honest mistake. :D
[snip]
------------------------------
From: "Mikkel Elmholdt" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Linux advocacy or Windows bashing?
Date: Fri, 4 May 2001 17:14:05 +0200
"Peter Köhlmann" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> Mikkel Elmholdt wrote:
> >
> > Any damn fool can bash Microsoft ..... but try to put up a compelling
> > case for the use of Linux, would be a more challenging task, at least
> > for the majority of posters here.
> >
> Any damn fool can bash linux or its proponents.
> But to put up a compelling cas for the use of wintendo would be a more
> challenging task, at least for Mikkel.
Wow, that response was really something! A masterpiece in logical deduction
and original thinking. (or perhaps more like "oh yeah, well, eeehr, ....
same to you, motherf*****!)
Did it ever for a minute occur to you, Peter, that I would not care to put
forward a compelling case for Windows? (that's actually the name for the
platform, only immature morons use silly nicknames). Advocating Linux is not
the same as bashing Windows.
I was merely looking for the Linux advocates to advocate the use of Linux.
Can you do that?
Mikkel
------------------------------
From: "Daniel Johnson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To:
comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy,comp.sys.mac.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy
Subject: Re: Justice Department LOVES Microsoft!
Date: Fri, 04 May 2001 15:13:33 GMT
"T. Max Devlin" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> Said Daniel Johnson in comp.os.linux.advocacy on Thu, 03 May 2001
> >"Rick" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
> >news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> >DR-DOS only looks good next to MS-DOS. It's junk
> >next to Windows.
>
> Bwah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha.
>
> Usually, Daniel, it is conventional for a troll to get further into his
> message before saying something this incredibly stupid.
Oh, like hell it is! :D
Any troll who isn't frothing at the mouth in *sentence one*
should hang his scaly head in *shame* and slink back under
his bridge!
Or at least that's what I think.
> You should
> reserve this kind of thing for what it is best for: a smoke screen, a
> method of mis-direction, a way of changing the argument to pretend you
> have a point when you've been shown a fool. Just making it an out-right
> lie like this might seem tempting, since comparing DR-DOS and Windows is
> an automatic abstraction error, since they are not comparable products
> in the eyes of the customer.
They *are* comparable products in the eyes of *developers*,
though, and it's the developers who matter in this.
They are platforms you build desktop applications on. And
DR-DOS is a lousy one.
> But we're not talking about the eyes of
> the novice customer; we're talking about the monopolistic producer. If
> DR-DOS was junk compared to Windows, why would MS bother with all the
> hassles caused by the AARD code?
A wee bug, fixed by release. Not much of a hassle.
> >Really. I'm not saying everything MS made was gold. :D
>
> I presume the smiley means you know you're lying.
You mean, I *am* really saying that everything MS is made
of gold? :/
I'm glad you're here to tell me these things, Max.
[snip]
> >Actually it was. CP/M needed a serious upgrade to make it on
> >the IBM PC, because it was written for an earlier CPU that
> >only could access 64k of memory.
>
> Ha. DOS needed a serious upgrade to make it on the IBM PC.
That too. But it ran on an 8086.
> Version 1.0 (and, to be honest, 2.0, but then again, this could be said of
> all versions) was seriously flawed; really complete crap. CP/M, on the
> other hand, was a simple, but functional, OS.
DOS is a "simple, but functional OS"- but it still stinks.
[snip]
> >> Unix was/is not second rate.
> >
> >A fine server OS (well, bunch of OSes), but it simply
> >doesn't even begin to cut it on the desktop.
>
> The distinction is a myth created by Microsoft to explain why their
> products sucked so much. "Its only a desktop; if you need
>[performance|reliability|stability|capabilities|scalability|compatibility|
> interoperability] then get a server!"
Desktops tend to need compatibility and they a particular
set of services.
Servers need a bunch of other things, among them different
services.
Desktops need GUI toolkits, good printer support,
and lots of glue to connect multiple applications.
They don't need to be scalable. They don't even need
to be *stable*. And they don't need to be real fast.
Servers do need those things, and they need things
like asynchronous I/O, file mappings, SMP, and
in general very good multitasking.
> Truth is, the idea of a 'server' didn't even exist
> until after Novell made millions selling file server software. "The
> server" was the PC that ran NetWare. This is a cause of concept-drift
> in the technology world; previously the terms 'client' and 'server'
> applied to software, not hardware.
That's still largely true, though I do see what you are saying-
that is when we started puttting server software on separate
boxes.
> But PCs are junky little things,
> compared to professional Unix systems, so they could not multi-task well
> enough.
They didn't need to- not to support desktop apps.
You needed a different OS to do server stuff because DOS
and Windows weren't good enough at multitasking, among
(many!) other things.
> If you ran a server on a PC, that was pretty much all it could
> do effectively, and so "the server" became a synonym for a 'host system'
> running server processes.
What with Windows NT, this is becoming less true, I think.
But we'll see.
> As for "beginning to cut it", PCs have finally evolved to the point
> where they can run a decent OS.
You mean a server OS. They were running a reasonably good
desktop OS in 1991, with Windows 3. Macintosh were
doing so long before, too.
I'm serious. DOS/Windows 3 isn't a great tool, but for
desktop apps it was better than Unix is now.
> MS would rather we were all still tied
> to monopoly crapware, though, so they spare no expense in restraining
> trade.
I'm not sure how that gets into it. MS is after all pushing
for a single OS for both client and server- Windows 2000.
Seems like you'd approve of that, after what you just
said.
> >Sure, it's better than DOS. What isn't?
>
> Windows, depending on your concept of 'better'. DOS was simpler and
> less confusing, which I believe is what "better" is supposed to mean to
> the common user.
I think you'll find that very few common users shared that
view at the time.
Developers found it simpler, because thye had to look at
the insides of Windows, which are not simple at all.
But what mattered for them is what the OS could do for
them, not how simple it was.
> >> Linux is not second rate.
> >
> >It's just like Unix.
>
> Thus, it is a powerful, professional-level OS, in comparison to Windows,
> which is just monopoly crapware.
It's a *server* OS; it does lots of fine things, but they aren't
the right things for desktop apps.
> >> BeOS wouldnt have been second rate.
> >
> >I don't know what you mean by this. It
> >was emphatically second rate; it might have
> >become better given time, but in reality that
> >didn't happen.
>
> "Didn't"? I wasn't aware the end of time had already passed; I must
> have missed it completely.
I think that for Be Inc, the end times have come. It looks
like it's going to be sold, or so I hear.
Okay, maybe the fat lady hasn't sung. But
she's warming up.
> >> Lotus 1-2-3 was not second rate.
> >
> >Well, no, but they stuck to DOS too long-
> >and this limited them. Excel was able to do
> >things Lotus could not because it could leverage
> >Windows techology.
>
> Bwah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha. Excel was able to "leverage Windows technology"
> alright. And Microsoft was able to "leverage OS/2 technologies" to make
> sure that Lotus was always behind.
I don't see what you mean about OS/2 here. What OS/2 technologies
did MS leverage?
> I know this will amaze you and the
> other trolls and sock puppets, but I'm not responsible for how lame your
> understanding of the real world is.
Evidently. :D
> >By the time Lotus came over to Windows,
> >they were playing catch up. And Microsoft
> >fought them doggedly, as you'd expect.
>
> No, they didn't fight them at all. They just broke the law, again, as
> you'd expect, by monopolizing. Once Lotus did get caught up (and
> surpassed Excel rather easily, as no real improvements had been made
> since Excel 2.0 for the Mac) MS started force-bundling Office.
For several years there was quite the battle royale between
Microsoft and the old DOS vendors- Lotus 1-2-3 vs Excel,
Wordperfect vs Word. Both sides just kept troweling on
the features.
Probably the most astonishing thing that happened during
this period was Microsoft's decision to include OLE in the
operating systems- rather than keeping it exclusively for
Office.
That was arrogant- it was a crucial feature, and rather
than using it to beat Wordperfect and Lotus over the
head, they used it to beat Apple and IBM (and their
OpenDoc technology) instead.
> >> WordPerfect was/is not second rate
> >
> >A similar story as with Lotus 1-2-3.
>
> No, an identical story; Microsoft acting anti-competitively, and you
> apologizing for their criminal avoidance of technical merit.
"Criminal avoidance of technical merit"?
Errrr... do you think being incompetant is a crime?
> [...I really wish this were still entertaining enough to be worth
> continuing, but Daniel's feigned naivete lost its charm five years ago
> when it was first put on the "approved sock puppet methods" list...]
Before you go, where can I get a copy of that list? I need to
expand by repetoir!
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (The Ghost In The Machine)
Subject: Re: Another Windows pc gets Linux
Date: Fri, 04 May 2001 15:14:44 GMT
In comp.os.linux.advocacy, Pete Goodwin
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
wrote
on Fri, 4 May 2001 08:39:33 +0100
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>:
>In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
>[EMAIL PROTECTED] says...
>
>> >Yes but LyX actually needs one as it produces a file to be converted to
>> >postscript then printed, does it not? Word goes straight to the printer.
>>
>> So to speak; presuming the document is not mangled by a "bad printer
>> driver" that needs to be reinstalled (!) and the computer does not
>> crash.
>
>On Linux or Windows? 8)
Both. There may also be issues with printer settings.
>
>> Meanwhile, you've forgotten again that 'sending' the file 'from' LyX to
>> be converted and then 'sent' 'from' the convertor to the printer is all
>> a single command in Linux, thanks to Unix's elegant and efficient
>> 'pipes', something MS is unable to comprehend, let alone match.
>
>Is it a seperate step the user needs to perform or does it all happen
>behind smoke and mirrors?
"Smoke and mirrors", if you prefer to phrase it that way. The printout
of a LyX (actually, TeX) file is done through a chain vaguely like the
following:
tex filename (filename.tex => filename.dvi)
dvips filename (filename.dvi => filename.ps)
magicfilter (filename.ps => filename.native; this uses Ghostscript)
spooler (filename.native => /dev/parX)
although it's likely that some of the intermediate steps aren't explicitly
created on the filesystem (unlike old DOS's pathetic attempts to model
the '|' pipe, for example), but are rather merely "figments of the
kernel's imagination" by using a primitive such as pipe(). Note
that this capability isn't unique to Unix/Linux; NT also has named pipes.
[.sigsnip]
--
[EMAIL PROTECTED] -- insert random misquote here
EAC code #191 4d:20h:20m actually running Linux.
Microsoft. When you're not aggravated enough.
------------------------------
From: "Daniel Johnson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To:
comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy,comp.sys.mac.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy
Subject: Re: Justice Department LOVES Microsoft!
Date: Fri, 04 May 2001 15:16:47 GMT
"JS PL" <the_win98box_in_the_corner> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> T. Max Devlin wrote in message
>
> >>A fine server OS (well, bunch of OSes), but it simply
> >>doesn't even begin to cut it on the desktop.
>
> Agreed. After spending about four days being amused by Mandrake 8, it
> STILL doesn't even begin to cut it on the desktop. I would almost venture
> to say that just about ALL of the included apps that I use crash regularly
> on Linux.
Perhaps open source still has a way to go as a development
methodology. I don't think that's Unix's fault exactly. :)
> The newsreaders especially suck. Half the no-name browsers are
> somehow or for some stupid reason configured by default to display web
> text at about 2 pixels in height, this is especially a pain in the ass
because
> I have to go in and configure larger font display for every damn user.
X windows makes this kind of thing problematic to deal with. You have
to work in physical pixels. Font support is not so hot.
It's possible to overcome these problems, but it's not easy. What
you observe are the consequences of this.
But the thing is that users don't *care* why things like
this happen on Unix but not Windows. App vendors
need to provide products that users want, and if
that means moving to Windows...
... then Windows just plain wins.
> File downloads regularly "stall" for minutes on end. Did I say regularly?
> I meant ALWAYS! And I think it ruined my favorite monitor but have
> no proof, but now the monitor flickers into half brightness all the time,
> since the install.
I somehow think blaming Unix for that one is a stretch, too. :D
> It makes a descent platform for running Apache though.
Sure. Unix was never meant to do what Windows does. It's
unreasonable to expect it to be good at it.
It's just as unreasonable to expect Apache to perform
well on Windows 95. Windows 95 has many of the
necessary APIs as hand-me-downs from NT, but
their implementation is often not so great.
[snip]
------------------------------
From: "Daniel Johnson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To:
comp.os.ms-windows.nt.advocacy,comp.sys.mac.advocacy,comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy
Subject: Re: Justice Department LOVES Microsoft!
Date: Fri, 04 May 2001 15:17:41 GMT
"Rick" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> Daniel Johnson wrote:
> > > Considering that DR-DOS was never meant to be a GUI, but, in fact,
> > > a platform which could, among other things RUN windows on it...
> >
> > DR-DOS, like MS-DOS, was a lousy platform for
> > something like Windows, never mind desktop
> > applications.
> >
>
> Then you might want to eplain why Windows ran on top of DOS.
Because users had lots of DOS apps and they
wouldn't switch if it means giving them up.
Running Windows on top of DOS means
MS can say: "Of course all your DOS apps
will work. Just exit Windows, and you are
back in good old DOS just like always!"
That was mandatory, and Windows just had
to live with the consequence of it.
[snip]
> > That is emphatically true of DR-DOS.
>
> Since Windows ran on top of DOS. And DR-DOS was a better DOS than
> MS-DOS, how can you support your point?
Being a "better DOS than MS-DOS" is damning it with
faint praise. MS-DOS was *terrible*; DR-DOS was
only slightly less terrible.
It's not for nothing that MS has spend the last
fifteen years trying to kill DOS.
[snip]
> > But it was developers who made Windows
> > king by writing the best apps for it. DOS
> > apps couldn't compete; they didn't have the
> > tools to match the quality that Windows apps
> > could put out.
>
> Microsoft developers.
Yes, those guys couldn't say "no" when Bill wanted
Windows apps. In the days of Windows 1 and 2, that
was important.
But no one company can provide enough software
for Windows- not if you want Windows to be the
universal OS for everything, anyway.
MS was very good at soliciting developers for
Windows- that, in my view, was the single biggest
factor for Windows success over OS/2.
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