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Poll

How do you feel about Microsoft?

It's my bread and butter - I own stock and have all the certifications!!!
- 0 (0%)
I use Microsoft software and I *love* it!
- 4 (22.2%)
I use it and I like it.
- 4 (22.2%)
I use it and I feel neutral.
- 3 (16.7%)
I use it because I have to, but I wish I didn't.
- 5 (27.8%)
I use it, but I'm thinking of faking my own death to escape it.
- 0 (0%)
I don't use it - it just isn't for me, and those who use it are OK people.
- 0 (0%)
I don't use it - and those who use it are retarded monkey abortions.
- 1 (5.6%)
All Microsoft users should be put in concentration camps where a big Start button clicks them on the head every 30 seconds.
- 1 (5.6%)

Total Members Voted: 17


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Zhwazi

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Re: Microsoft
« Reply #30 on: March 17, 2011, 02:22:30 AM »

The only valid reason I can think of to choose a PC over a Mac is if it's something Apple simply has no analogue for, (4 socket server? Power-sipping media server with multiple drives? Laptop with aircard built in?) or if you can't do what you want to do with a Mac (Exchange is not likely to be ported over). It's worth saving up extra money so you can get a Mac, especially laptops where you're stuck with overpriced proprietary parts anyways, Apple makes the best laptops hands down. For normal users, there's not a lot that you can't do with a Mac.
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Amazing Richard

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Re: Microsoft
« Reply #31 on: March 17, 2011, 03:48:58 AM »

The only valid reason I can think of to choose a PC over a Mac is if it's something Apple simply has no analogue for, (4 socket server? Power-sipping media server with multiple drives? Laptop with aircard built in?) or if you can't do what you want to do with a Mac (Exchange is not likely to be ported over). It's worth saving up extra money so you can get a Mac, especially laptops where you're stuck with overpriced proprietary parts anyways, Apple makes the best laptops hands down. For normal users, there's not a lot that you can't do with a Mac.

Yerself as an "Ex-Anarchocapitalist", maybe you will have a few words to say about this:

Personally, I feel that the general poor quality of an average PC is not due to cheap parts or poor software, necessarily, but rather, businesses are INTENTIONALLY creating these poor products, as part of the business model. I have a big problem with this idea and I believe that companies implement this sort of thing as part of their business model. These companies are not incompetent....they INTENTIONALLY MAKE CRAP!!!! And that is pretty sick stuff!

The business model goes like this: "We will INTENTIONALLY make crap and sell it to the consumer ...over and over again....and forget about making something of high quality, cuz that's to small of a market."

The problem is....this lack of quality makes everybody look bad, but these business guys don't care....so long as there is a market for crap.

Now, somebody who wants to argue with me can say, "Well, not everybody can afford fancy stuff, Richard....so these companies have to make the cheap stuff for us".

Last time I went to Costco, I saw typical laptops there for $600. To me...$600 is a lot of money to spend on a piece of crap. And I get the idea in my mind that these companies and banking on the idea that I will continue to buy such crap, indefinitely.

No class.
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blackie

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Re: Microsoft
« Reply #32 on: March 17, 2011, 09:30:39 AM »

It's worth saving up extra money so you can get a Mac, especially laptops where you're stuck with overpriced proprietary parts anyways, Apple makes the best laptops hands down.
Every time I buy a new computer I consider a Mac, but the price always make choose a PC. A mini Mac is $699. The cheapest laptop is $999. By the time I have a Mac with a config I would want, it's closer to $2000. It's not that I can't afford a Mac, I don't want to spend the extra money on it.

Also, I am starting to look at laptops as a disposable item, more of a thin client. If something major goes wrong with the hardware, you just replace the entire laptop. There isn't much you can do to a laptop without voiding the warranty. If I spend $2000 on a laptop, I don't want to void the warranty.

Maybe Apple makes the best laptops if you don't take price into consideration. If I had to pick a laptop to steal, I would steal a Mac.

I may build a hackintosh one of these days. I'm more interested in OS X than I am in Apple hardware.
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Alex Libman

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Re: Microsoft
« Reply #33 on: March 17, 2011, 09:46:50 AM »

Macs are not only overpriced, they also lock you into a hardware monoculture.  And if you're a developer you still need to virtualize / remote access Windows to test IE compatibility.  Or run the best business GUI apps.  And Mac's Java support sucks.  And the interface was designed by the teletubbies.  Oh, and Al Gore is on the board of directors.  Using a Mac is pretty much like french-kissing Al Gore while Jeff Goldblum uploads you a virus through his magical alien-compatible wireless hippie-beam.  :roll:

Maybe y'all would like to start a separate Mac thread?


I've tried them all.  They ALL suck.  [...]

OK, if that's true, well, then Microsoft loses in that regard.  The 1% of users who share your multi-desktop mania have a legitimate reason to avoid Windows.

I've always preferred the interface concept of nested tabs, and I still use tabs for Web browsing and editing, but I now prefer a tiling window manager and xterms instead of a gnome-terminal like interface.  Even with wmii and lots of stuff running, I never use more than ~6 "views".  There are add-ons for most browsers and IDE's that let you organize tabs into a hierarchy or use a side tree view.  You could set up an X server with something like wmii in MS Windows as well.

But I don't advocate running Windows as your primary OS, just something you fall back on for features you can't get on a pure Copyfree stack.  Then the only GPL ports you need are Chromium's dependencies and either qemu or an RDP client.
« Last Edit: March 17, 2011, 10:02:17 AM by /sbin/libmand »
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Sam Gunn (since nobody got Admiral Naismith)

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Re: Microsoft
« Reply #34 on: March 17, 2011, 04:46:33 PM »

I use, and like, Microsoft products. Oh, I'm sure Apple is SO much better. But, it also costs SO much more.

It's like someone saying, "You know, instead of a Toyota you should drive a Lexus. It's much better." Perhaps. But, I can actually afford a Toyota.

Like I said....you may want to consider purchasing a used Lexus, instead of a new Toyota. But, I think It is wrong for you to compare a PC to a new Toyota, cuz them cars are pretty reliable. Maybe it's more accurate to compare a new PC to a new Ford.

My used mac has outperformed a my dead Dell (that I bought new). I'm wondering how long this used mac is gonna last, and I'm thinking that I should get a new computer soon. But, you know what, I have a feeling that this used mac is gonna last a lot longer than I expect it to.

Maybe a mac is worth the money.

As an average computer user, and if you take the price difference away, and just deal with quality, I really cannot think of any reason why I would choose a PC over a Mac. Having worked with both PCs and Macs over the years, I have no doubt that Apple makes a much better product (in general), and you might save yerself some money in the long run by going with a Mac, instead of a PC.
The fact that for $300 I can build a PC that's equivalent to a $1000 mac kinda kills your argument.
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Turd Ferguson

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Re: Microsoft
« Reply #35 on: March 17, 2011, 04:58:02 PM »



The fact that for $300 I can build a PC that's equivalent to a $1000 mac kinda kills your argument.

Yep, lets see someone do that with a Mac. Screw apple and their chained down devices.
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Zhwazi

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Re: Microsoft
« Reply #36 on: March 18, 2011, 12:26:52 AM »

I use, and like, Microsoft products. Oh, I'm sure Apple is SO much better. But, it also costs SO much more.

It's like someone saying, "You know, instead of a Toyota you should drive a Lexus. It's much better." Perhaps. But, I can actually afford a Toyota.

Like I said....you may want to consider purchasing a used Lexus, instead of a new Toyota. But, I think It is wrong for you to compare a PC to a new Toyota, cuz them cars are pretty reliable. Maybe it's more accurate to compare a new PC to a new Ford.

My used mac has outperformed a my dead Dell (that I bought new). I'm wondering how long this used mac is gonna last, and I'm thinking that I should get a new computer soon. But, you know what, I have a feeling that this used mac is gonna last a lot longer than I expect it to.

Maybe a mac is worth the money.

As an average computer user, and if you take the price difference away, and just deal with quality, I really cannot think of any reason why I would choose a PC over a Mac. Having worked with both PCs and Macs over the years, I have no doubt that Apple makes a much better product (in general), and you might save yerself some money in the long run by going with a Mac, instead of a PC.
The fact that for $300 I can build a PC that's equivalent to a $1000 mac kinda kills your argument.
Find me a laptop with a touchpad as big and sensitive as a macbook for $300. Find a laptop with a shell that isn't made out of plastic for under $1000 (the macbook air at $999 is the nearest I know of).

If all you look at are numbers and you compare gigahertz and gigabytes you can do better for your money with something that isn't a Mac. If you want a computer that isn't crap in every way that is not mathematically quantifiable, you want a Mac.

Nobody said macs are cheap. But Macs aren't crappy computers where minimal engineering effort went into configuring a plastic craptastic windows-running contraption. If you want a laptop that doesn't suck, you want a Mac. If you want a normal desktop that runs Windows, Apple doesn't have anything for that market.


I've tried them all.  They ALL suck.  [...]

OK, if that's true, well, then Microsoft loses in that regard.  The 1% of users who share your multi-desktop mania have a legitimate reason to avoid Windows.

I've always preferred the interface concept of nested tabs, and I still use tabs for Web browsing and editing, but I now prefer a tiling window manager and xterms instead of a gnome-terminal like interface.  Even with wmii and lots of stuff running, I never use more than ~6 "views".  There are add-ons for most browsers and IDE's that let you organize tabs into a hierarchy or use a side tree view.  You could set up an X server with something like wmii in MS Windows as well.
I use tmux extensively and it's similar in some regards to a tiling WM, except for the lack of it being a window manager. (BSDL and included in OpenBSD's base system. If you don't use it then wtf why not.) It works well for that. And I probably could set up an X server but then I'd have to use applications that look nothing like the rest of the computer. That's another annoying aspect of Windows that none of the GUI applications look anything alike. I don't hold it against Microsoft, but it's a major turnoff for using Windows. Steam, Chrome, iTunes, Skype, Notepad, Photoshop, and Trillain all look completely different. GTK apps like GIMP and Xchat look nothing like QT apps like the KDE apps I've installed. I blame the developers of the individual applications for being stupid and gimmicky with everything. It's still a huge turnoff for using Windows. And I don't want to add even more stuff that doesn't fit and doesn't even use the same window manager.
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Amazing Richard

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Re: Microsoft
« Reply #37 on: March 18, 2011, 01:57:10 AM »

I found the name of the business concept that I mentioned earlier that intentionally makes crap, and it is called: "Planned obsolescence":

Quote
Planned obsolescence or built-in obsolescence[1] in industrial design is a policy of deliberately planning or designing a product with a limited useful life, so it will become obsolete or nonfunctional after a certain period.[1] Planned obsolescence has potential benefits for a producer because to obtain continuing use of the product the consumer is under pressure to purchase again, whether from the same manufacturer (a replacement part or a newer model), or from a competitor which might also rely on planned obsolescence.[1]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planned_obsolescence

Not long ago, I purchased an HP printer for $100 at Costco. It was a massive piece of crap from day 1, and even worse now, and I have barely even used it.

"Planned obsolescence" is not just a thing regarding Bill Gates' PC World, but Steve Jobs is a fan, using it as part of his business model, too. Much of the criticism towards Jobs is related to him selling crappy iPods that do not last very long....yet Jobs' hand held gadgets is the bread and butter for the Apple company.

Personally, I have never owned any such gadgets like iPods/mp3 players, black berries and such. I have never even had a basic cell phone/plan/contract that I bought with my own money. So...I can't say too much about such Apple based hand held gadgets, and as to whether they are crap or not, but I believe the reports that say that Apple's hand held gadgets are crap. I'm sure everybody's hand held gadgets on the market are crap, and a giant rip off.

I was not impressed when Jobs went from Mac OS 9.1 Classic to Mac OS X, which forced designers to get hold of new copies of graphics programs like photoshop and what not, cuz the 9.1 versions would not work in Mac OS X environment, unless you ran it through a crap emulator, which is never a good idea.

And when Jobs was into that thing where he would lock up mp3s sold on iTunes, so that they could only work on apple products ....convinced me to never purchase an iPod.

I also find iTunes to be crap, and I never use Safari cuz it crashes so much that it reminds me of Gates' IE. Firefox seems to work fine, though.

But when you put all of Steve Jobs' negatives together, it does not even come close to the supreme evil that is Bill Gates. Bill Gates is so evil that it makes some people spend crazy amounts of money on Apple machines instead of spending much less on a crap Bill Gates' PC.
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Alex Libman

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Re: Microsoft
« Reply #38 on: March 18, 2011, 02:14:52 AM »

[...] a touchpad as big and sensitive as a macbook  [...]

With all due respect to Zhwazi - that's the #1 gayest thing I've ever read!  (Or maybe a tie with that guy who saved his jizz in a freezer - WTF!)  We need a separate Apple thread to sort this fruity faggotry out.


I use tmux extensively  [...]

I've played around with tmux, just because it reminded me of a DOS terminal tool from almost 20 years ago, but I don't ever use it.  What's the point?  Everyone is running X anyway!  You can't live without a full GUI Web browser, and a tiling X window manager is a lot better.

In theory it's useful for doing many things per ssh session, but in practice I always end up with separate ssh sessions for remote execution of commands and IDE's that can access files over sftp.  And you certainly can't justify installing it on work servers because most systems already use that GNU turd called `screen`.   :x


That's another annoying aspect of Windows that none of the GUI applications look anything alike.  [...]

I was gonna say that about Loonix, especially Ubuntu.  Most people mix GTK, Qt, wx, XUL, Mono, Swing / SWT, whatever the OpenOffice interface abstraction layer is called, etc like third rate drunks!  Microsoft offers you the full stack, and all MS apps of a single generation look very much alike.  Sure, third party apps can look like whatever the heck they want -- it's their business -- but for the most part they use the same Windows widgets / WPF API's with no major redundancies.

Most importantly, all Microsoft products provide a consistent well-documented .NET API and PowerShell shortcuts.  You can use any .NET language to script anything - unlike Loonix quickly becoming a mix of perl, python, mono, java, bash, etc.  And you don't need to muscle-memorize one set of keyboard shortcuts for shell (even pdksh is only usable in emacs mode), another for vi, a third for Firefox, a fourth for Eric, and a fifth for NetBeans / Eclipse!  (I know they overlap to some degree, but still...)
« Last Edit: March 18, 2011, 02:28:59 AM by /sbin/libmand »
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Cognitive Dissident

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Re: Microsoft
« Reply #39 on: March 18, 2011, 02:53:41 AM »

[...] a touchpad as big and sensitive as a macbook  [...]

With all due respect to Zhwazi - that's the #1 gayest thing I've ever read!  (Or maybe a tie with that guy who saved his jizz in a freezer - WTF!)  We need a separate Apple thread to sort this fruity faggotry out.


This is the kind of shit that makes people not sorry when you get yourself banned.
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Zhwazi

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Re: Microsoft
« Reply #40 on: March 18, 2011, 03:09:34 AM »

Maybe I've just been stuck with tiny touchpads one too many times but a touchpad larger than 4 square inches is a big deal to me. If it's too small it's either too sensitive to be precise or I have to lift my finger up to move the cursor across the screen. :P

And tmux is fucktons better than screen. I don't have X installed on my server, but I do have sshd and tmux, and I never need more than one connection to the server unless I started a compile or something without launching tmux first and I wanted to do something else.

I usually use KDE, which is very coherent as a desktop in terms of appearance. The most mismatched application I ever used was Skype, which at least uses QT color themes if not the widget styles, and the window decorations look the same unlike any of the Windows applications I use. I don't like Ubuntu. Microsoft's stuff is good about being coherent. Windows application developers are terrible at it. I don't have problems like that in OS X at all however.
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blackie

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Re: Microsoft
« Reply #41 on: March 18, 2011, 08:36:46 AM »

Find a laptop with a shell that isn't made out of plastic for under $1000 (the macbook air at $999 is the nearest I know of).
That isn't hard, but that seems more about aesthetics than functionality. I had a netbook with an aluminum shell. It was still crap.

Quote
If all you look at are numbers and you compare gigahertz and gigabytes you can do better for your money with something that isn't a Mac. If you want a computer that isn't crap in every way that is not mathematically quantifiable, you want a Mac.
I would also put the Mac in the crap category. Computers suck, and Macs are not an exception.
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Cognitive Dissident

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Re: Microsoft
« Reply #42 on: March 18, 2011, 08:44:42 AM »

Find a laptop with a shell that isn't made out of plastic for under $1000 (the macbook air at $999 is the nearest I know of).
That isn't hard, but that seems more about aesthetics than functionality. I had a netbook with an aluminum shell. It was still crap.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say it's one of the things I hate about Apple laptops (because I'm proud to be objective and not a "fanboy"--for example, I'd much rather be running OS X, legitimately, on a ThinkPad.)  My favorite was the "Pismo," which was their last non-metal-body laptop.  I cartwheeled that baby (accidentally, by not zipping up the bag and being careless) across a Denny's floor, and it was fine.  An aluminum PowerBook later simply slid off a desk and it had hundreds of dollars' damage.  It turns out the metal bodies dent and disfigure much more easily.  That said, the current "unibody" models are much more rigid than the older ones.
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Alex Libman

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Re: Microsoft
« Reply #43 on: March 18, 2011, 11:02:21 AM »

This is the kind of shit that makes people not sorry when you get yourself banned.

Sense of humor.  There's an app for that.


[...]  And tmux is fucktons better than screen.

Definitely, but the only time you need it is when you're remote connecting to other servers, and most servers have `screen` installed by default, so you better be used to pressing Ctrl-A instead of Ctrl-B and not relying on any tmux-only features.  (Yes, I know you can customize the keys, that's not the point.)


[...]  I never need more than one connection to the server  [...]

So you are really inconveniencing yourself by introducing a whole new interface paradigm and confusing your shortcut key "muscle memory" (ex. I still find myself pressing wmii's Mod-# by habit when running something else)...  just to constrain yourself to one ssh session instead of (at times) several?  What's the benefit of that, really?



[...]  I usually use KDE, which is very coherent as a desktop in terms of appearance.  [...]

Qt/KDE is a pointless second way of doing things that offers no real advantages over the first.  GTK apps are a lot more polished - Pidgin, Gimp, Inkscape, Blender, AbiWord, etc are used by many times more people, including mainstream Windows users.  KDE is a weird little sect.


Anyways, we're getting off-topic.  This is a Microsoft thread.
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Zhwazi

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Re: Microsoft
« Reply #44 on: March 18, 2011, 10:41:44 PM »

[...]  And tmux is fucktons better than screen.
Definitely, but the only time you need it is when you're remote connecting to other servers, and most servers have `screen` installed by default, so you better be used to pressing Ctrl-A instead of Ctrl-B and not relying on any tmux-only features.  (Yes, I know you can customize the keys, that's not the point.)
I'd rather install tmux somewhere in my home folder and alias it than use screen.

Quote
[...]  I never need more than one connection to the server  [...]

So you are really inconveniencing yourself by introducing a whole new interface paradigm and confusing your shortcut key "muscle memory" (ex. I still find myself pressing wmii's Mod-# by habit when running something else)...  just to constrain yourself to one ssh session instead of (at times) several?  What's the benefit of that, really?
No, I do it because tmux is more convenient than multiple ssh sessions. Especially because I use strong passwords and don't want to have to "su -" to root and enter my 30-character password on each session I want root access for. Rather just ssh in once, become root, tmux, and split my windows up until I'm happy.

Quote
[...]  I usually use KDE, which is very coherent as a desktop in terms of appearance.  [...]

Qt/KDE BSD is a pointless second way of doing things that offers no real advantages over the first.  GTK apps are Linux is a lot more polished [...] KDE BSD is a weird little sect.
Coherence! I think I said that at the beginning. There's much more consistency within KDE BSD than there is in GNOME/GTK Linux.
« Last Edit: March 18, 2011, 10:43:25 PM by Zhwazi »
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