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Bill Gates: "Someone decided to trash the one part of Windows that was usable?"

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Re: Bill Gates: "Someone decided to trash the one part of Windows that was usable?"

#171

Post by Keyframe »

ido wrote: post #69
ssp wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft has made a bunch of very good products: - Windows 3.0 and 3.1 clearly hit exactly the sweet spot between DOS and OS/2 - Word and Excel were legitimately better than the competition (and still are, although there is not much competition left). - Internet Explorer 4 was so much better than Netscape 3 and 4 that it wasn't even funny - Windows 2000 and XP were very good operating systems

Almost all releases of the NT line were good (including Win 7). Was there any OS contemporary to NT 3.51 that was better than it at anything (beside win 95 when it comes to compatibility with more software & hardware)?

IRIX (RIP)

Re: Bill Gates: "Someone decided to trash the one part of Windows that was usable?"

#172

Post by carussell »

sandipagr wrote: post #15
oihuyjfrgtdfghj wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes it's all fixed in Win7 if you just want to roll over and let it force you to use IE and Bing and Hotmail for everything. As soon as you try not to use IE suddenly you can't do anything

Only time I ever used IE was to download Firefox when I first installed windows 7. So, I have no idea what you are talking about. My experiences haS been great.

Only time I ever used IE was to download Firefox

Next time use ftp.

Re: Bill Gates: "Someone decided to trash the one part of Windows that was usable?"

#173

Post by shadowsun7 »

wwortiz wrote: post #134
shadowsun7 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what his beef is with Microsoft Security Essentials, but I just tell my friends and family to get a Mac. It's too tiring keeping up with antivirus offerings, and constantly needing to clean up after their messes. I'd recommend Linux, to be honest, because it's a cheaper alternative. But because there's still no good way of using it without needing to open Terminal at some point - the Mac is, I suppose, a…

You can use ubuntu without opening the terminal, and have been able to for a while, the problem with linux is not the terminal it is whether or not the hardware is supported and software people need is supported.

I recommend that you sit behind a non-technical relative or friend, and watch them use Ubuntu without offering them any help.

There are quite a number of things that they'd like to do that isn't clearly expressed - or even easily findable! - though Ubuntu's GUI. They will struggle with it for a bit.

Plus: even if we set that aside, there will be certain bits of hardware you'll want to use that would require opening the Terminal to configure/install.

Because my objective is to minimize my time spent on helping my friends/relatives with their computers, Ubuntu simply isn't a good enough alternative to Windows. You merely trade the time spent on making the computer virus-proof with time spent teaching them where to find things (which is funny, because most of the time I'm finding things for the first time myself, seeing as I prefer the Terminal).

As opposed to the Mac - I send them away to buy one, and they never come back to me for help.

PS: Why the downvotes? I expressed a justified assertion, backed up with some evidence, and people react to the fact that I'm dissing Linux? Tsk, HN, I expected more of you.

Re: Bill Gates: "Someone decided to trash the one part of Windows that was usable?"

#174

Post by rapind »

mryall wrote: post #132
chc wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Xbox was revolutionary. Online multiplayer on a console had been tried many times before — as far back as the Sega Genesis and as recently as the Xbox's rival, Playstation 2 — and failed miserably every time. Microsoft was the first company to make it work, and their current implementation is still probably the best. And I don't know any developer who would dismiss Visual Studio. In most regards, it's a best-of-breed…

Java IDEs like Eclipse and IntelliJ made VS look like a toy until very recent editions. No built-in refactoring support, limited configurability for keyboard shortcuts, minimal integration with external build tools and SCM systems -- it was horrible going back to C# development from Java when I was doing both in 2005-2006.

Not sure where eclipse is at now but I have less than fond memories of that beast. I did most of my java coding in ultraedit so I could actually listen to mp3s at the same time back then.

Not that I had a lot of love for VS either, but I don't remember it ever running as heavy as eclipse.

Re: Bill Gates: "Someone decided to trash the one part of Windows that was usable?"

#175

Post by uid0 »

whyenot wrote: post #159
johnthedebs wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see people write this all the time, and it makes me sick. Bill Gates decided he made enough money at Microsoft and wanted to pursue other things. That's fantastic, for him and millions of others. Steve Jobs has decided to do what he loves until he can't any more. That's also fantastic, for him and for millions of others. They're both making positive changes for lots and lots of people. Who are you, or anyone else,…

Steve Jobs releasing some new shiny thing that makes the lives of some very affluent people (on the global scale for wealth) magrinally better, doesn't compare, is not even in the same ball park, as ensuring that hundreds of thousands of people don't go blind in central Africa. That is my belief, and of course I understand that not everyone else shares it.

> Steve Jobs releasing some new shiny thing that makes the lives of some very affluent people (on the global scale for wealth) magrinally better, doesn't compare [...]

Aren't all people equal?

Re: Bill Gates: "Someone decided to trash the one part of Windows that was usable?"

#176

Post by rapind »

mrshoe wrote: post #8

If Gates had maintained a dictatorial death grip on his company like Steve Jobs has, MS probably could have made some decent products. It's one thing to yell at the people who made this system via email. It's quite another to never allow them to ship it in the first place .

I can't shake the feeling that I've always been somehow out of touch, because I'm not really a fan of most apple software. First thing I do with osx is the same thing I always used to do with windows. Get rid of all the distracting annoying stuff (dock, dash, iEverything) then happily get down to business. I never did use vista but with all other windows versions I would always just remove a dozen or so things and happily move along with my work never to be annoyed by them again.

The only thing that keeps me using my iPhone is safari and the screen. It's great. That's the killer feature to me. Yet it's annoying I can't turn images off without jailbreaking.

I don't really think apple delivers software products that are much better than MS products. Hardware yes although the xbox line is pretty sharp.

Or maybe I'm just getting old.

Re: Bill Gates: "Someone decided to trash the one part of Windows that was usable?"

#177

Post by dieterrams »

whyenot wrote: post #153
dieterrams wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't about which CEO is the better human being. It's about which management style is more effective.

I didn't claim that it was. I do think it is worth considering all the costs and benefits of Bill G staying at MS. The benefits might be a better Windows. The costs are all the work he wouldn't have time to do outside the technology sphere.

Ah. I don't believe mrshoe was talking about Bill Gates remaining CEO of MS. He was suggesting that Gates should have managed more like Jobs back when he was CEO.

Re: Bill Gates: "Someone decided to trash the one part of Windows that was usable?"

#178

Post by munchhausen »

Seth_Kriticos wrote: post #94
WalterGR wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Enough to make it very repetitive, too little that automation would make much sense, especially considering the abysmal automation tools Windows comes with cough shell cough Hmm... I've been thinking about switching to Powershell. What do you find abysmal about it?

You are kidding, right? Powershell just does not conform to the original UNIX sh standards, which is why even console wizards will avoid it. Same reason why tcsh and ksh didn't get traction, and they even have merit to them. Who is the target audience? UNIX command line people certainly aren't. Then who, people that managed to learn VB Scripting host? That's just not how things work.

> Same reason why tcsh and ksh didn't get traction, and they even have merit to them.

In the world of enterprise Unix, ksh is king. It is used even for "serious" applications, not only as the sysadmin's glue of choice (the company where I work at was using, in 2009, a HR payroll application written in ksh. Had they not outsourced accounting to a third party, they would probably still be using it today).

Granted, "legacy" Unices are being slowly obsoleted by Linux, but ksh lives on. It would be unthinkable for RHEL or SLES to deprecate ksh and leave it out of the distribution - enterprise customers would probably think this is some kind of a bad joke.

Re: Bill Gates: "Someone decided to trash the one part of Windows that was usable?"

#179

Post by hboon »

blasdel wrote: post #164
rbanffy wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They may be bad, but come on, much worse than Sharepoint?

Yes, worse than Lotus Notes or Sharepoint. I've seen some gibberingly awful Oracle web interfaces for HR stuff like entering time cards, but the worst was a "Software Life Cycle Management" thing that a client was using — a bizarre issue tracker with piles of inane baked in process. When you logged in it would open a sole chrome-less popup window. You weren't allowed to be logged in more than once per account: one co…

Your words remind me of a software called ChangePoint. Nightmares about it still haunt me.

Re: Bill Gates: "Someone decided to trash the one part of Windows that was usable?"

#180

Post by sliverstorm »

cynicalkane wrote: post #142
sliverstorm wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> normal users can totally trash their systems and that is not OK. That is one of it's greatest shortcomings. Then again, on the other hand, that is one of it's greatest strengths.

It's not a strength. Poorly-defined, fundamentally broken behavior is not a strength.

Sorry, I was referring more to Linux as a whole, and I guess you are talking more specifically about the package manager?
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