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Microsoft is acquiring the rights to Unix
Tindo@heart - May 19, 2003

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  Tindo@heart May 19, 2003
http://news.com.com/2100-1016_3-1007528.html...

<_< Bill Gates is the AntiChrist. He won't stop until he has your souls!

Burn in hell®

All levels and tempertures of hell are copyright ©2003 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.

but they are giving a glance at their purdy new OS codenamed "Longhorn"

http://reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=...story...

with all the bells and whistles of the spyware known as "Palladium"

Bend over and grab your ankles everyone.

 Curtis May 19, 2003
Pfft - just what everyone needs. A user friendly Unix.

 Taelon May 19, 2003
Too bad Microsoft's version of "user friendly" doesn't mean stable software that just works - but rather hiding any settings/options that are even in the slightest advanced, so that any errors/crashes that do occur can't be resolved by someone who doesn't know about all the hidden stuff.

Like last night in the ClassicSega hub... me and a few others told someone to open a CloneCD image of a Saturn game in SatConv by changing the .img file's extension to .bin.

He couldn't figure out how to do that - Windows hides all known file extensions by default. The next HOUR was spent getting him to unhide extensions. Poor guy. :-/

 racketboy May 19, 2003

  
	
	

		
		

			Originally posted by Taelon@May 19, 2003 @ 07:08 PM



 The next HOUR was spent getting him to unhide extensions. Poor guy. :-/


really? the guy must have problems.

I can do it in less than a minute

 gameboy900 May 19, 2003

  
	
	

		
		

			Originally posted by Taelon@May 19, 2003 @ 02:08 PM



 Too bad Microsoft's version of "user friendly" doesn't mean stable software that just works - but rather hiding any settings/options that are even in the slightest advanced, so that any errors/crashes that do occur can't be resolved by someone who doesn't know about all the hidden stuff. 



Like last night in the ClassicSega hub... me and a few others told someone to open a CloneCD image of a Saturn game in SatConv by changing the .img file's extension to .bin.



He couldn't figure out how to do that - Windows hides all known file extensions by default. The next HOUR was spent getting him to unhide extensions. Poor guy. :-/


I don't know what you're doing but I have yet to crash XP once. (Well that's not true it did crash once but that was due to the very buggy beta drivers I was using for my capture card) And just so you know I use this machine to dev in C++ and have on many occasions had code that behaved badly (memory leaks, infinite loops, etc) and each time I just go into task manager, kill my program and everything is fine.

Keep this in mind. Windows is aimed at the 90% of users who will NEVER need any of the advanced features that are "hidden" in it. The 10% of advanced users can quite easily find how to gain access to them with a little searching on MSKB or the internet.

Give Microsoft some credit. They have to make a complex piece of software that runs on billions of possible hardware configurations, has to run millions of (often horribly buggy) programs from over 20 years and is used but everyone from complete morons to uber geeks. It's not easy to do (as anyone trying to use slightly non-mainstream hardware on linux will tell you).

 Taelon May 19, 2003
Ah, but you're just proving my point. He was less than experienced/familiar with Windows and didn't know where to FIND the option to show all extensions. He had to be walked through every little thing to get there. That's exactly what I was saying, MS makes these simple things a pain in the arse for those who aren't power users like you and me.

EDIT: My response above was to racketboy. As for gameboy: I don't know what you read into my words but I don't recall complaining about my system crashing... it's extremely stable, thankyouverymuch. Also, I agree with your argument of Windows running on zillions of configurations, but you completely missed my point - which was about hiding the simple things like the option to show extensions away from users who don't know where to find it.

 ExCyber May 19, 2003
This appears to be little more than a FUD move -- remniscient, no less, of the traditional computer-related FUD example: where IBM said "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM". MS is apparently trying to say "nobody ever got sued for deploying Windows". SCO seems to be getting little sympathy from anyone else, though - attacking a loved thing makes you hated, and it's not helping that SCO is not Bell Labs, not to mention that they took their sweet time coming up with a lawsuit that could presumably have been brought a couple years ago during 2.3.x development. SCO clearly doesn't actually care about any actual infringement, only how they can play it to their strategic advantage. Otherwise Linux contributors would have gotten C&D letters (or -- shock and horror -- reasonable discussion on a plan to migrate away from infringing code) by now.

 antime May 20, 2003
I recall reading that the SCO directors had already cashed in after the lawsuit raised their stock - which as far as anyone can tell was the plan from the beginning. (Can't provide references, my net connection is b0rked.)

 Tindo@heart May 20, 2003
Curtis, unix already has a user friendly interface. ... it's called "OSX"

Taelon, I wish I were there. I would have him open a dos box from the explorer window that contains the file. Tada, you are in a DOS window in the same directory as the file and with a few DOS commands it's done in seconds. 'dir *.img' should show the file's DOS name that you need changed. Then 'ren ???.img ???.bin' is it. Then 'exit'

Oh yeah, 'WINDOWS KEY+R' opens a run command, and then you can type 'command' or 'cmd' for NT based systems.

Though I'm sure you all know that.

I'm always resorting to the command line for the GUI's shortcomings.

though I turn off "hide extensions for known filetypes" off on all of my Win installs. Only advanced users, .. or novices doing advanced things , need to change extentions anyways.

windows make some fine software, but it's horrible for the advancement of computers if Microsoft owns them all. We need competition to keep improvements advancing. I'm sure MS didn't purchase Unix so it could implement it, it was just to own that competition.

 gameboy900 May 20, 2003
I wanted to see just what it would take for an idiot to find out how to turn on file extensions so I kinda did that. Anyway here goes.

1. Click on help in the start menu (I have mine turned off so I had to press F1 after clicking on the Desktop).

2. Type in "show file extensions" in the search box of the help center and click search.

3. 6 items show up. After a few minutes of reading option 4 "Common Tasks: Folder Options" has the line "Show hidden files and file name extensions" in it.

4. Click the + icon beside that to expand and notice description mentions what I want to do.

5. Click the Step by Step link in the topic.

6. Follow instructions to unhide extensions.

You see not that hard to find this info. The problems is that most of these users don't want to read instructions to do stuff and expect it to just be where THEY think it should be (obviously this is an impossible task to do). With a little reading anyone could find this info quite easily. And yes the Windows manual does in fact explain how to use the help center to find answers to these questions.

One of the reasons I like the acronym RTFM so much.

 tsumake May 20, 2003

  
	
	

		
		

			Originally posted by gameboy900+May 20, 2003 @ 01:30 AM-->
QUOTE(gameboy900 @ May 20, 2003 @ 01:30 AM)