h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I know that "they" will get me for this, but someone has to stand up for TRVTH, JVSTICE, and all that crap!

Now take me away to my punishment! Post haste, Jeeves!

Self flagellation works for me

But what about all that ennui crap? I thought I was going to be drowned in ennui!

Oh, but how could you be drowned in ennui with all the exciting developments?

computers and laptops in color, firewire, airport, QT4...

Oops, that wasn't Bill & Co., was it? It was that other guy, the Lazarus person.

OH, wait, I know! a stable, open source OS!

No, that wasn't Bill either, it was that penguin guy.

Meanwhile, back in Redmond...ennui

*blub, blub, blub*

New word -

Vexennui - meaning "the lack of paragraphs"

I demand I be subjected to GROSS ENNUI immediately! I'll have no compromising of the Justice System here! I did the crime, I'll serve the time! "Tis a far, far nobeler thing I do..."

Send the plane. I'm ready to go!

Do you mean 'vexennui-lack of paragraphs' as in the inability to know when to end a paragraph and start another one? As in continuning to write in a paragraph form until the thoughts, answers, comments, sentences all seem to run on into one unintelligible thought. And until your mind and body cry out for some break in the thoughts, and your eye cries out for some kind of blank space in the answer. Any blank space, anywhere. Just so the mind and eye has somewhere to rest. Yes, rest: to sleep, however briefly. That sleep that ravels the 'ragged sleeve of care'. Oh, but now I am quoting Shakespeare, and this started out to be an entirely different subject. But it does illustrate my meaning, and hopefully makes a point in the demonstration of 'vexennui' I am trying to make about those paragraphs that form a complete block and you think the author trained under James Joyce, or that they are actually lying on the psychoanalysists couch and this is a transcript of their session. And the only way this will ever end is when my hour is up. Actually it is my 'fifty minutes', which always seemed to be a cheat to me. I always thought you should get an entire hour for your money. But then that would me that the analyist would lose one paid hour for every six hours they were in session. And without doing any heavy duty math, I suppose that could end up being at least one paid hour a day, which works out to be 250 hours a year. With a two week vacation, that is. And if you multiply 250 x $150 dollars an hour that would be lotsa money. Getting the calculator out, it comes out to $3000 per year. But I digress. Is this what you mean by 'vexennui'????

Or, perhaps the reverse.

The inability to MAKE a paragraph.

With the result being short, choppy comments, spaced out on the page.

Equally hard on the mind and eye.

Which one is 'vexennui' and which is the opposite? And what is the definite of the opposite? And does anyone care? Perhaps I should just get on the GROSS ENNUI plane with the Baron...

Trve. If you've ever blasphemed the Holy Micro$loth Weird, you should be svbjected to GROSS ENNVI! A trifling VEXENNUI, which merely troubles the eys, should you attempt to puruse the words hidden within it's depths, is nought to the punishments of GROSS ENNUI!

I'll save you a seat in first-class.

Actually, Microsoft Word 4.0 for the Macintosh is the greatest piece of software ever written. Subsequent versions are about as useful as throwing a brick at your computer screen. Windows 98 is like the brick.

Vexennui is a word combining the words vex and ennui. Vex - to anger or annoy. Ennui - feeling of listlessness and general dissatisfaction

I am continually annoyed and depressed by the badly written Microsoft Word programme in its poor application of basic English rules, one of them being the lack of a easy, one key stroke, way to indent new paragraphs. Other programmes like Quark Xpress, used in newspaper offices worldwide, do not have this problem.

A classic example of a interface written by a programmer who went to school to eat his lunch during the English lessons is h2g2.

A classic example of h2g2 researchers who went to school to eat their lunch during English lessons are the ones who do not seperate paragraphs by spaces.

No simple, one key stroke, way to create paragraphs. Vexennui.

NT, however, is the best thing you can get (at the moment) for a PC with a lot of plug-n-pray periprials. Solars, nice as it is, just doesn't have the driver-base. Nor does the absolute best of the PC options, Linux.

There's one of the reasons I decided to learn to program myself.

da Baron
Mind where you wipe that booger!

Current Oz pacific peso pricing
MS Word 2000 $530
Quark Xpress $2439

The price of the paragraph?

;^)#

Free, if you use linux and run Wordperfect.

Also free if you peruse certain newsgroups ( news.alt.binary.warez.ibm-pc ). Of course if you run a Mac, all bet's are off (unless you try a linux variation for Mac, and it *seems* like I've heard of such- I definately know Apple makes it's own proprietary flavor of unix): the Mac newsgroups suck.

da Baron
Mind where you wipe that booger

Curious to know, Baron...What are you going to program yourself to do?

From a business POV, NT rules. My network contains 200 PCs & is about as stable as any damn OS you can get. It takes 1hr & 3 pokes at the keyboard to go from blank PC to full-functioning workstation, complete with lock-downs (users don't need to configure their own desktops, dammit!) & complete apps. Thats what I call a business OS.

Good point Bruce.

Cultivate a friendship with a person who works as a sub editor or in the creative department of a newspaper.

Then ask him/her to smuggle out a copy of Quark Xpress on CD.

Load it on your computer and return the CD. Cost - a couple af beers.

The big problem with using Quark is other people can not read your files unless they have Quark software.

Yes, I do like NT. It's the most stable operating system Microsoft has ever produced. It may be my lack of RAM (only 64 megs- I have 128 installed, but that's another story) which causes it to occasionally crash- mostly when I'm putting it through some very hard paces with a HEAVY load (net apps, windows managers, resident progs for monitoring etc., usually with some multimedia/graphics proggies thrown in for good measure. Yes, I think it would be quite stable with ONLY the server software(s) running.

I'm running NT server 4, by the way- with all the aforementioned. And with that much load, it's still quite a bit stablier than 9x. NT is a very fine operating system.

However, Linux can do everything NT can do and just as fast on a 486sx. I know, because I ran linux on a 486sx for quite awhile, as a companion to my main machine (I'm building a beowulf cluster). It did everything NT could do with MUCH less RAM/CPU resources. I'm talking Xview, Xpaint, emacs, etc. all popped open on different virtual desktops (like I run in NT, as well!). And it NEVER crashed, and I NEVER re-booted, unless it was my CHOICE to. So, in terms of more bang for the buck (linux is free, of course) Linux can't be beat.

But for entry-level system administration, NT is the tops! Simply because it is so easy to configure/use.

Solaris is getting there- I ran Solaris for Intel awhile- with a lot more visual configuration utilities and whatnot- but you still have to be able to manipulate the unix command-line to really get the results out of it. It's also very easy to install, and has some PNP support (it found my sound card, for one thing), but it's driver-base is nearly as limited as linux's- and I can probably add that there is actually a larger driver-base for older hardware for linux.

I like all of these enviroments- they all have their pluses and minuses. It depends on what you have and what you want to do with it as to which would be best for you...

da Baron
Mind where you wipe that booger!

addendum:

I'm programming myself to RULE THE WORLD!

SShhh - you'll scare the sheep

Why? I'm not an Ozzie!

da Baron
Mind where you wipe that ***?**!