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Windows Refund Day (1999)

marc.merlins.org

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Re: Windows Refund Day (1999)

#131

Post by rbanffy »

egeek wrote: post #116
rbanffy wrote: post #102

I love how, now, I can just order a Dell or Lenovo and just ask for "no OS installed". I wish getting an ANSI keyboard were that easy around here (Ireland)

Have you tried reaching out to Dell on the chat? We buy the Precision laptops in Switzerland, and there's a number of keyboard options (including US)[0]. I checked Dell UK for a similar device [1] but they only have German, UK or French listed. [0] - https://www.dell.com/de-ch/work/shop/notebooks/neu-xps-15/sp... [1] - https://www.dell.com/en-uk/work/shop/laptop-computers-for-bu... (edited for formatting of reference…

Dell is easier - they have options for most models. Lenovo only offers them on the Thinkpad line.

Re: Windows Refund Day (1999)

#132

Post by rbanffy »

schoen wrote: post #126
zeruch wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oops, wrong one. John Hall (often used the faux middle name "Tiberius" for reasons no one understood) was a young exec from Stanford who now is an exec...somewhere else? (It's been a while since I even had to recall the guy), not Maddog. Maddog was and is a Prince of a fellow.

Huh! This reminded me that I once knew that there were two different people called Jon/John Hall, and then forgot. I've met Maddog a number of times, most often in Brazil. It's amazing how much of a celebrity he is for Brazilians; there would sometimes literally be a long line of people waiting to be photographed with him.

> It's amazing how much of a celebrity he is for Brazilians

Are you kidding? He looks like Santa!

Re: Windows Refund Day (1999)

#133

Post by anthony_r »

asveikau wrote: post #121
anthony_r wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VA Linux is one of those prime examples of stock market mania. Close behind in terms of scale and similar in terms of philosophy/narrative (of the good small man sticking it to the evil big machine) to what we saw recently with GameStop. It is even a featured example in recent editions of The Intelligent Investor. The more things change the more they stay the same.

As an outsider, it definitely wasn't obvious at the time. Red Hat is still around. If you look at their wikipedia article and see the photo of the rack mount servers they sold[1], that doesn't seem that ludicrous even today. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geeknet#/media/File%3AServer...

The "mania" is in the public perception & pricing of securities. Many "mania" companies were legitimate, or at least had legitimate parts in it (look at the example of GameStop, there's nothing wrong with the company, but it was hilariously overpriced).

Re: Windows Refund Day (1999)

#134

Post by gscott »

Years ago Microsoft had some sort of Internet access plan monthly and you received a free computer. A court nullified it and I was able to keep the eMachine computer for free. I can't remember the specifics but I had at least two free computers from it.

Re: Windows Refund Day (1999)

#135

Post by zeruch »

schoen wrote: post #126
zeruch wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oops, wrong one. John Hall (often used the faux middle name "Tiberius" for reasons no one understood) was a young exec from Stanford who now is an exec...somewhere else? (It's been a while since I even had to recall the guy), not Maddog. Maddog was and is a Prince of a fellow.

Huh! This reminded me that I once knew that there were two different people called Jon/John Hall, and then forgot. I've met Maddog a number of times, most often in Brazil. It's amazing how much of a celebrity he is for Brazilians; there would sometimes literally be a long line of people waiting to be photographed with him.

He was/is one of the very few "open source luminaries" I actually think highly of as a person. Ted Tso, Jeremy Allison are a few others. Highly intelligent, highly thoughtful people. Working with them was a treasured experience.

Re: Windows Refund Day (1999)

#136

Post by ogre_codes »

bostonsre wrote: post #124
ogre_codes wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is windows better or worse than macs/osx with Linux hostility? To me, it seems like Microsoft is less bad than Apple in this regard. I'm not sure what you mean. Personally I like the Mac because it lets me run Unix stuff in a no BS way from the command line. It also runs Docker fine (haven't tried it on the M1). It doesn't have something like WSL, but it doesn't really need it because you can compile most things fo…

I mean that you can't buy a computer with mac hardware and linux os. Microsoft isn't forcing hardware vendors to only use windows. Osx unix is still vastly different from most production environments. I really like wsl because I can use whatever linux os that I'm comfortable with and have access to a wide range of supported apps on windows. It seems really elegant to me and its not just running a linux vm on windows…

I’m still not following you here.

I’ve done Django on MacOS, run Kubernetes Klusters, done Java Spring, Ruby, MySQL, Postgresql, MongoDB, Express.js, Koa, etc etc etc.

The MacOS shell is different from production Linux. So is WSL, so is whatever version of Linux you are running at home. If you want to mirror a product environment perfectly, you use Docker. Otherwise, most people aren’t going to see big differences.

Re: Windows Refund Day (1999)

#137

Post by asveikau »

anthony_r wrote: post #133
asveikau wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an outsider, it definitely wasn't obvious at the time. Red Hat is still around. If you look at their wikipedia article and see the photo of the rack mount servers they sold[1], that doesn't seem that ludicrous even today. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geeknet#/media/File%3AServer...

The "mania" is in the public perception & pricing of securities. Many "mania" companies were legitimate, or at least had legitimate parts in it (look at the example of GameStop, there's nothing wrong with the company, but it was hilariously overpriced).

Ironically the successor entities to VA Linux eventually became part of Gamestop.

Re: Windows Refund Day (1999)

#138

Post by 1vuio0pswjnm7 »

Animats wrote: post #74
1vuio0pswjnm7 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is pretty amazing how Microsoft has gotten away with this, which probably had few comparables in the business world when OEMS first started pre-installing Windows on personal computers. Gates' entire fortune rests on the success of it. I have always thought there is this underlying assumption that generally no person would ever purchase a computer that had no OS pre-installed. (Obviously that is not true, there ar…

It is nigh impossible to purchase computers and connect to the internet without the presence of middlemen and pre-made selections. Who are you buying from? I get computers from Central Computer, which has five stores in Silicon Valley. They charge $30 extra to install Windows 10, $64 for Windows 10 Pro, and $0 for Linux.

All I want is a BIOS or equivalent. Software necessary to initialise the hardware. I do not need Linux installed.
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