Re: How many names and addresses can you have for ID card
- From: MM <kylix_is@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 05 Apr 2006 14:00:23 +0100
On Wed, 05 Apr 2006 10:03:47 GMT, Dan Holdsworth
<dan1701usenet@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Wed, 05 Apr 2006 09:23:43 +0100, MM
<kylix_is@xxxxxxxxxxx>
was popularly supposed to have said:
On Tue, 04 Apr 2006 21:07:03 GMT, Dan Holdsworth
<dan1701usenet@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
The other downside is that Oracle is written for serious experts in
mind. Think command line only (except when you're installing, where it
insists on having a display so it can play adverts at you) and cryptic
commands, plus very cryptic textbooks on the topic. If you're serious
about Oracle, go on a course about it and be prepared to practice a lot
at home on a test machine to make sure you know the syntax correctly.
No, you've frightened me away! I was only interested in perhaps seeing
how it did things compared to the Microsoft products that have worked
for me over many years. But, command lines? Crikey! We are not talking
Linux here, are we?
No, it gets worse. Solaris and a default of ksh for operating
environment, when you're not using sh. For some reason they don't use
bash all that often, which is unsettling to we Linux users.
Oh, yes! bash and tar and vi and gz and... how incredibly geeky it all
sounds! Okay, so I know that one /can/ be shielded most of the time
from geekdom, but Linux so often reminds me of Pleasantville, the
black and white alien environment which the lovely Reese Witherspoon
set to rights. As long as you do a few basic things, you're fine. But
step outside the boundaries, and suddenly you're on your own. Where
does Mrs Williams from down the street go, for example, to find out
why her Linux installation will not do what she wants? With Windows
there would be a plethora of people she could turn to, probably
starting with younger members of her own family. This is where Linux
has just got to get to, but it is so difficult to achieve when there
are so many distros.
On balance, I prefer MySQL for small to middling systems, although
having heard a so-called expert wittering away about the new MySQL big
clustering "solution", I would definitely go running to the Oracle rep
when a really big job came along.
Oh, we are! Don't get me wrong. I love the concept of open source
(though remain perplexed as to how a *small* one-man-band outfit is
supposed to make any money if it basically gives away its products for
free), but Linux is still not what I would call "user friendly". It is
still an OS for geeks, isn't it?
You'd be surprised with the modern distributions, I think. Most now ship
and install in a safe manner, and have a lot of graphical tools to make
things easier when you're installing. Things like Debian also tend to
fail safe and make installing and de-installing software a very great
deal easier and safer than it is on Windows.
I have successfully installed SuSE and Mandrake before now. Yes, they
worked kind of ok. But the menus, utilities, and suchlike left a lot
to be desired. I also tried to get Samba working between Linux and
Windows, but it was a total nightmare. I got it working after a
fashion, but that is what so often seems to epitomise Linux: "after a
fashion". Perhaps I should give it another go - it's been 18 months
since I last attempted anything with it.
I mean, computers are so bloody
difficult for older people who never grew up with them. Just like
setting video recorders, for example. Much of modern technology is
like that - mobile phones being another example. A hundred and one
different, mainly unused, features, all buried deep down in arcane and
convoluted menus, when all most people want to do is make and receive
phone calls.
Again, this is a failing of product design, not of the base operating
system that the software is running on. Microsoft are as bad as everyone
else here; huge, bloated, feature-rich products that change slightly
with every release to Microsoft can carry on selling tech support on
them.
Admittedly things like OpenOffice are if anything as bad or worse (and
GNU Cash is such a horror to compile that it makes grown men weep), but
a good deal of the open source tools are small, simple, powerful tools
that do a few things well.
I have got OpenOffice installed on this (Windows) PC, but I never use
it. I have used it a bit before, and it seems to work okay. Just not
as polished as Word, for example. But my brother used to swear by Word
Perfect, so it's often horses for courses.
I was complaining about Linux years ago (while extolling, like I said,
the concept), but things have barely moved on. Now the rage seems to
be for live disks. Next year it will be something else. But until
Linux aficionados actually sit down and contemplate the products they
champion, Linux will remain a niche product, something that councils
and other organisations can wave at Microsoft when negotiating deals,
but unappealing to the mainstream when comparing with Microsoft or
Apple alternatives.
Err, you do know that Apple OS X is thinly disguised BSD Unix, don't
you?
Yep, but it has been exposed to the "Jobs" effect!
You seem to be judging a book by its cover rather too much. The problem
with computing products is that by their very nature they are complex
and in order to use them you really should know something of what you
want to do and how you wish to do it.
But again, take most average domestic users of PCs. They are going to
feel at home more quickly with Windows than with Linux. There is
absolutely no technical reason why the Linux bods could not by now
have reached the same standard, but it's like herding cats. At least
with Microsoft all the cats look like Bill Gates and live in the same
building.
Microsoft products have an unfortunate tendency to work only partly, and
to fail in strange and unusual ways with a minimum of error messages as
they do so; they do not go in for the arcane and cryptic error numbers
so beloved of mainframe people, nor the error message overload of KDE
developers but merely an unnerving lack of warning and peculiar losses
of function.
But Windows still functions pretty well for /most/ people. As would
Linux it were a bit more user friendly. The last OS I used at work was
NT 4, but at home I have stuck with 98SE now for years, simply because
it works for me. I don't *need* anything that XP could give me, and I
certainly don't need the continual patches that Microsoft releases
almost on a weekly basis to fix all the holes. As for Vista, Billy Boy
can stick it where the sun don't shine, as far as I'm concerned!
They are also still suffering from the old and now-discredited Default
Accept approach to security, where bad things are forbidden by the
product and everything else is deemed acceptable until proved to be a
Bad Thing.
That works quite well if your users are fluffy nice people who don't do
nasty things to other people. However, there are a significant minority
in the world who aren't nice and cooperative (fewer than you might
think, actually), and they louse it up for everyone else. As a result,
Default Deny is now the security model of choice, and this is what
Linux, Unix and the like work to.
The net result is that Unix derivatives, whilst not being unfriendly,
are a bit choosy about who their friends are. Windows isn't so choosy,
and gets hit by security problems regular as clockwork, and serious bugs
almost as often.
Dear me, this is sounding very like Linux advocacy, for which I
apologise. I shall endeavour not to spout off like this again.
No worries! We all like to let our hair down occasionally.
MM
.
- References:
- Re: How many names and addresses can you have for ID card
- From: MM
- Re: How many names and addresses can you have for ID card
- From: MM
- Re: How many names and addresses can you have for ID card
- From: Alex Heney
- Re: How many names and addresses can you have for ID card
- From: MM
- Re: How many names and addresses can you have for ID card
- From: MM
- Re: How many names and addresses can you have for ID card
- Prev by Date: Driving licence: odd question !
- Next by Date: Re: Be afraid ... your choice of music makes you a terrorist
- Previous by thread: Re: How many names and addresses can you have for ID card
- Next by thread: Re: How many names and addresses can you have for ID card
- Index(es):
Relevant Pages
|
Loading
