Posts by Peter Darlington
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Yikes, watch out for the latter bits of that the Soprano's Whack Jobs list unless you want all the highlights from the new episodes! Venture past No 9 at your own peril!
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Of course soccer is more popular than everything else...
True. But I still prefer football.
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Oh I love the Americas Cup. I love it because it gives me sports points. It works like this. For every naff sport that I have no interest in watching, I can earn sports points by loudly and unsubtly commenting to my partner that it is (a) on and (b) I have absolutely no interest in watching it because I'm not a sports obsessed bore.
This also works for basketball, netball, hockey, Commonwealth Games and the Olympics amongst many others. Basically most sport that isn't football, rugby or cricket.
Then when we're deep in the middle of the Tri-Nations and the Black Caps are touring England and the English Premiership is about to start and I'm watching about 14 hours of sport per week I can always say 'Hey, at least I didn't watch that crappy yachting!'
Bless Dean Barker and his cherubic little face.
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1, 3, 4, 6: *nix. They did it better before the others did it at all, and now they've got GUIs for it too.
2, 7: Playstation, etc. PCs simply aren't in the same class.That may all be true but my point was that the Windows XP PC is probably the only one that does all of the family/hack/productivity/design/games thing all within the same OS, on the same box, at a very cost-effective price.
For all the rubbishing of Windows, and the somewhat justified criticism of MS licensing, until another company can replicate this, MS will own the market.
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Sorry about that Ben. Something about...
...the problem of crap Microsoft products is more the fault of customers of Microsoft than themselves. If people hadn't poured billions their way as reward for shonky practices...
...led me to believe the discussion was about how foolish MS customers are.
It's not about me liking MS products, there's plenty I don't like about them. It's about horses for courses just as you say and I find a lot of the arguments around OSS very dull and unproductive. But loads of people happily use Windows and good luck to them I say.
We use a truckload of Windows Server at work as well. Alongside Red Hat of course.
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<quote>I guess I'm saying, much though I hate to, that the problem of crap Microsoft products is more the fault of customers of Microsoft than themselves. If people hadn't poured billions their way as reward for shonky practices then we'd probably have stronger (and less feature rich) software today.<quote>
Hmmm, sounds a bit like elitist rubbish to me.
The best computer on the market today, taking into account...
1. Price
2. Simplicity, ease of use
3. Breadth of applications
4. Differing uses
5. Out of the box functionality
6. User base, support
7. Reliability...would be a Windows XP SP2 PC.
Sure, for niche requirements, brand loyalty or specific uses you can probably do better but nothing else will get close to it as a machine for the everyman or woman.
And that's why Bill Gates is a billionaire, not because MS customers are crazy phules.
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I'm with Paul. We have three Macs and a PC for the kids' gaming, and the PC has been more grief than the other three put together.
Yeh but that's PEBKAC which is hardly something Bill Gates should take the blame for.
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On the other hand I'm not going to spend all my spare time rooting spyware and viruses out of my family's computers.
See, unless someone is a complete vandal, there is really no reason why a MS environment needs to be like that. It's easy enough to stay trouble free if you want to. I'd say it's no more trouble than my Linux desktop tbh.
The thing I love about Linux is that any application or device that exists out there can be retooled, re-engineered and downright pimped with a wealth of features that I may have never known I needed, until I started using them. That is the power of open source.
But it's not a wholely suitable environment for workers who just want to use the screen to do the basic tasks they need to do for their job. Any changes to the enterprise should start with them. And any factors for change should take the wholesale consequences of those changes into the account. Not just the price of the software licenses.
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Wouldn't know. Was talking about schools anyway. Haven't used a Mac since I left university. But they were great there....
Schools can be considered quite large IT enterprises nowadays. Thin clients in a virtual server environment will be far and away the cheapest option for desktop mgt and some schools, including Nelson College on my patch have started to understand this.
While the issues around broadband have carried on for years, the poor old schools have been left to make a complete balls up of developing the LAN and data infrastructure at their premises. The sad fact is that, as metropolitan data services and local peering networks come onstream, the requirement to fix inside the firewalls may make the broadband problem seem trivial.
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Or Macs. They're cuter.
Hmmm, so running 1000-2000 Mac clients in the enterprise will be cheaper than a MS environment?