[extropy-chat] when will computers improve?

[Eugen Leitl]

On Sat, Dec 20, 2003 at 03:22:39AM -0500, Harvey Newstrom wrote:

> This is why I like the MacOS X.  It has the Macintosh gui for the graphical

Yeah, I second that encouragement. OS X is lots of work if all you want to do
is to run a UNIX, but it's definitely a good computing experience if you
don't have to run Windows (I use a sacrificial box for that, or run an
emulator -- WINE is a pain, so I use VMware with cracked serials). You can
use OpenOffice (not yet even carbonized), if you install Apple's X Server.

Just get used to those frequent multi-MByte patches, most of them requiring a reboot.
I definitely miss that apt-get dist-upgrade nonintrusiveness.

> interface and a unix command prompt for the command-line interface.  It has
> all the same shells to choose from as unix or linux, so the commands are the
> same.  Scripts that run on unix or linux will run on the Mac as well.  The

Superficially, it's a *nix, but there are lots of maddening, unnecessary
deviations from a standard. If you're an old UNIX hand, get thee to
http://fink.sourceforge.net/

> Unix command prompt is much more powerful that DOS.  You can chain a lot of
> commands together, with filters and reformatting between the chain links.
> The commands actually run simultaneously, so that each line of out put of
> one gets processed in the next at the same time.  Unlike DOS which captures
> all the output from the first program before inputting it to the second
> program.  It also has full job control, where you can run commands in the
> background, switch between them, set priorities, etc.

Notice that you can have a good shell on a Windows machine as well, via
cygwin. And next-generation shell from Redmond has some very interesting
features (largely centered around .Net, but also useful for a *nix person).
(Just don't forget the first-born clause in the EULA).
 
> I have always had good results running WINE under unix or Virtual PC under

Redmond owns Virtual PC now, so start expecting bad surprises.

> Mac.  Everything ran fine, just slower than the native machine would be.
> Under Virtual PC on a Mac, I have installed RedHat Linux, DOS, Windows 95,
> 98, and ME for testing purposes.  All of them loaded from the PC CD's and
> couldn't tell the Mac from a PC.

I've had subtle hardware interfacing issues with VMware, but in the majority
of cases it's a decent workaround. It can be only a migration help, anyway.
 
> I have seen this problem with the Extropy BBS.  I debugged it down to YABB
> referencing its own page objects incorrectly.  The way they did it did not
> refer to the current window, but the topmost window or first window or some
> such sloppiness that might not get the right window when more than one
> window was open.  If the other window had forms with similar object types in
> it, YABB ended up accessing and trying to change windows it didn't own,
> causing errors and inconsistencies between what it thought it had set and
> what ended up getting set in its own window.

Another illustration as to why using a GUI for a pure text exchange is
solving a non-problem.
 
> This is very true.  I travel around a lot doing consulting, and am often
> plugging my laptop into different monitors, networks, printers, etc.  The
> stability of my system was dramatically different while I was plugged into
> different things.  I quickly learned which devices made my system flakey and
> which ones didn't.

Designing a stable system takes an experienced engineer. And this is 2003. Is
that pathetic, or what?

-- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a>
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