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

I didn't know the numbers are anything like that - but linux has (on my consern) one main problem - We (Israely falk) use alot of hebrew, which is rwiten right-to-left, and Linux still has many problems in that area...
oh, yhe - I find case-sensitive software to be a tad anoying...
I do have Linux installed on my computer, but I'm using Windows because of the veriaty of software available.

And, no, I'm not talking "iMAC vs Windows" - I'm talking "Mac vs PC", or might be called, "Apple vs The Free World".

Hi,

Yes well Mac against PC o.k. i stand corrected !
It's not just you I was speaking of, more like the whole thread.

About Linux : I don't even use it myself but I think it's great that the consumer gets a little bit more choice. And yes it is definitely not perfect ! But it only exists for a few years so you never know what may come out of it.
I DO like Linus Torvald's attitude towards improving Linux by getting the whole IT-community into the development.

But as I said I am a prejudiced asshole; I work with AS/400's and they are in a whole other league. Not that anyone outside the AS/400-business would care of course, it doesn't run on a PC...yet
The fact that you can work on your networked PC and not notice it's the AS/400 doing the work means that it works great but also that not many people will go mad about it. They will never even see the computer and think it's all done with Windows...

Of course Revenge Is Ours...guess what Microsoft uses for it's own administration throughout the company...

TM.

It's a long lost secret that Microsoft stopped using its own OSs to run their servers with...

I once read that when Bill Gates was having his mansion built (is it finished yet?) the local council (or whatever it calls itself) had to install a new computer system to cope with the paperwork generated. It wasn't a Windows-based system (don't know what it was, though) because they knew that wouldn't be able to cope!

Same goes for their administration. They run that on AS/400's and every year they try to migrate to a windowsplatform. Only thing is it costs so much money and work that every year they decide to leave it be!!

Didn't they have that problem when they annexed hotmail? i heard tehy tried to switch the UNIX servers to NT and discovered it wsn't possable and had to admit that in a very embarrased way.

It's getting boring to make fun about MS's software. Can't we just say 'They suck!' and it over with?

Well, its pretty much true. They suck bt they are teh standard. All it prooves is that millions of people can be wrong. But anyway, in defence onf teh humble floppy. I can fit tons of stuff on a floppy from the net in uni and copy it in to my home system. Now with about 20 JpEGs at least per disk thats still useful in my book.

We already know that bilions can be wrong - but the thung about floppies is their relaibility, or the lack of it.
Today, it is much safer to send youreself email, or evan take your HD with you where you're going.

I can't remember the last time I had trouble transferring files from place to place on a floppy. Problems because a software package didn't like a format it was supposed to like, yes, but not with the files. (O.K., let's come clean here. I have a word processor that saves stuff in 'Microsoft Word 6.0' format. This is fine with Microsoft Word 6.0 and some of the versions between that and the current version of Word. However, my husband's company uses the latest version of Word. I have given him several files to print (my printer is currently non-functioning), only to find the contents looked nothing like I intended when I saved them to disk. Just MS working to its own rules, I guess!)

On the subject of the reliability of floppies, here's one I heard a while ago. A man was given/sent some software on floppy disk - the old 8" ones that really were floppy. Later he phoned the people he got the software from, saying that his computer wouldn't read the disks and that there must be something wrong with the software. He was asked to bring the disks back so the contents could be checked. On arrival at the supplying company he took the disks out of his pocket, UNFOLDED THEM and handed them over for checking. And he was surprised that the computer wouldn't accept them after they had been folded!

Cool. Stuff like that acually did happen alot. That and peopel sticking teh old 5.25'' disks betweed the gaps in teh drive or several in teh same drive. I've only had occasional problems with floppys usually caused by bad secotros appearing (And thats because of tghings like the fact that I ping that little slide at the top, sitting teh disks next to my walkman headphones and dropping them on teh street.) As at home I don't have an E-Mail facility I prefer floppys to transport JPEGS and text files between our respective systems. I woudl never just transport my hard disk because

1. The damn things are a pig to install.
2. Its far more delicate than a floppy disk.
3. If a floppy fails its inconvenient, if your HD fails its a good couple of hundred quid down the tubes.

Sorry I'm late, all sorts of things popping up at the last moment....

Just wanted to say that I agree : Microsoft-bashing is no fun....I use Frontpage2000 and it works like a dream....well almost But they did a bloody good job upgrading it...

Now about WINDOWS...that's an altogether different matter..

Now please go on with whatever you were doing thank you.

TM.

Well, there were always the fools; these days many computer labs have reported cases of broken "coffe holders" (CD drives)or "electroncs machines refusing to work due to lake of power' (meaning the users never pluges the damn thing inside the power socket), and i've heard the sentece "You're telling me I need a Modem AND a computer to log on?!?!?".
I'm sure Print had the same problems when it came.

Its the old thing. When things go wrong, people blame computers, not the idiots at the keyboard. I hope computers rise up and demand an apology with a stream of stroingly worded E-Mails.

I don't recall who was it who said "To error is human; But to really screw somthing up, you need a computer."

I don't know but it is sobering words.