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| 30 MAY 2006 at 2:21am |
Lady KestrelGuild Master
Posts : 4038
Joined: 27 SEP 2004
Location: US, NJ
Status : Offline | I'm happy to say I avoided all of those.
"Where is the fountain that throws up these flowers in a ceaseless outbreak of ecstasy?"
-Rabindranath Tagore
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| 30 MAY 2006 at 6:00pm |
The WolfboySorcerer Apprentice
Posts : 304
Joined: 16 FEB 2006
Status : Online | Ah, Comet Cursor. My old nemesis. We dance on your grave now! Dance!!
But yeah, Realplayer. An evil that haunts us still. "o you want to install Realplayer", it asks us when we click on the wrong file type. "No bloody way!" we reply.
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| 31 MAY 2006 at 12:58am |
JetsetlemmingIntergalactic Janitor
Posts : 54
Joined: 16 APR 2006
Status : Online | 5. 5 of those products I had, or still have. -____- Windows ME should have been number 1. AOL's bad, but at least everyone knows not to trust them. Microsoft, though? They're supposed to be giving us the good stuff. >
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| 31 MAY 2006 at 7:34am |
Lurker01Private Detective
Posts : 411
Joined: 23 JUN 2004
Location: US
Status : Offline | Since when has Microsoft been associated with high quality goods?
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former." Albert Einstein
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| 31 MAY 2006 at 10:21am |
JetsetlemmingIntergalactic Janitor
Posts : 54
Joined: 16 APR 2006
Status : Online | Not really quality, per se, but still better than the competition. Mac OS's are twice the drain on hardware resources (I've articles of people whom used Boot Camp on their Macs to load windows, and played the same game under both OS's and got twice the framerate under Windows), and Unix/Linux is useful in some cases but not nearly centralized or standardized enough to be a commonplace competition. XP is a pretty good product, as far as I've been using it, but then again, ME was my last OS before this one so that might be making this look better than it is. No complete crashes, no need to re-install, no usage of a System Restore, and no out-of-nowhere error messages that isn't because of my hardware (Voodoo cards get way too much praise -_-). I've been told that Mac's aren't upgradable like a PC is, I wouldn't know first hand, though.
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| 31 MAY 2006 at 8:22pm |
The WolfboySorcerer Apprentice
Posts : 304
Joined: 16 FEB 2006
Status : Online | Originally Posted By Jetsetlemming (31 MAY 2006 12:58am)
AOL's bad...
Not really.
There are still hundreds of people, who are new to the net, who are lead to believe that AOL is a good thing. The entire company works on people's general nievete when they're a rank beginner at the 'net thing.
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| 31 MAY 2006 at 10:12pm |
JetsetlemmingIntergalactic Janitor
Posts : 54
Joined: 16 APR 2006
Status : Online | Originally Posted By Terror Of The Wolf - Part 4 (31 MAY 2006 8:21pm)
Originally Posted By Jetsetlemming (31 MAY 2006 12:58am)
AOL's bad...
Not really.
There are still hundreds of people, who are new to the net, who are lead to believe that AOL is a good thing. The entire company works on people's general nievete when they're a rank beginner at the 'net thing.
Wait, you disagree that they're bad, then talk bad about them? And that, btw, isd not all AOL does. Endless spam, horrible connection quality and speed, and just think about all the pollution they made with all those free discs in the mail!
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| 1 JUN 2006 at 4:36pm |
SusanGuild Master
Posts : 5485
Joined: 13 OCT 2002
Location: 0
Status : Offline | 13. IBM PCjr. (1984)
But if it wasn't for the PCjr, Sierra and the King's Quest series might not have gotten off the ground.
CueCat! I remember when Parade magazine was making a big fuss about it. Oooh, so I read an article and then I can buy a device to scan the barcode and have my computer bring up a webpage related to it? I could sense disaster with that from the moment I first read about it.
I remember that horrid round mouse that Apple came out with, too. The Macs in the computer labs at school all had it. (Good thing I had the sense to always use a PC.) Ergonomic nightmare indeed. What were they smoking when they designed that thing?
Don't even get me started on AOL! [smiley=shudder.gif]
I miss my Bubba: 1986 - 2006.
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| 1 JUN 2006 at 8:46pm |
The WolfboySorcerer Apprentice
Posts : 304
Joined: 16 FEB 2006
Status : Online | Originally Posted By Jetsetlemming (31 MAY 2006 10:11pm)
Originally Posted By Terror Of The Wolf - Part 4 (31 MAY 2006 8:21pm)
Originally Posted By Jetsetlemming (31 MAY 2006 12:58am)
AOL's bad...
Not really.
There are still hundreds of people, who are new to the net, who are lead to believe that AOL is a good thing. The entire company works on people's general nievete when they're a rank beginner at the 'net thing.
Wait, you disagree that they're bad, then talk bad about them? And that, btw, isd not all AOL does. Endless spam, horrible connection quality and speed, and just think about all the pollution they made with all those free discs in the mail!
No, I should have emphasised the 'but everyone knows not to trust them' bit. Not delete it. Because not everyone knows about them. That's how they survive
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| 1 JUN 2006 at 11:22pm |
MarkGuild Master
Posts : 3803
Joined: 10 OCT 2002
Location: US, Georgia
Status : Offline | I almost succumbed to the lure of the Iomega Zip Drive. Everyone I knew then had one or two:
"But, Mark! What if your hard drive fails?"
"I have back-up floppies."
"But, but, what if the data is corrupted?"
"I have a second hard drive."
"But what if it fails?"
"Then &$#* it."
Later, every single one of those people that had the Iomega Zip Drive were struggling with those blue and black units - and their very pricey cartridges.
The first digital synthesizer I ever had was a Yamaha DX7. To save patches, it had a priority cartridge. They never worked very well. I would then smash them with a hammer. It was satisfying.
As a result of this barbaric behavior, I was frowned at a lot.
So, to get even, I vowed never to own another piece of gear that had to rely on cartridges for data storage and retrieval. I wanted standardization, and the closest things were synthesizers and modules with computer interfaces - MIDI ports.
Needless to say, a Gameboy was out. In fact, I missed several generations of hand-held gaming devices. I can honestly say that I have never owned a hand-held, portable gaming doo-hickey.
And it's all about the cartridges. Plastic, overpriced, non-standardized, prioritized, unreliable clutter.
Please proofread your posts carefully to see if you any words out.
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| 2 JUN 2006 at 5:00am |
| Deleted User | I succumed to the zip drive era. Seemed sensible, for a small number of months. I couldn't GIVE the thing away a short while later.
I still have a synth (K2500S) that takes floppies, but I long ago gave away the SCSI CDROM drive that would make sampling usable in this unit.
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| 3 JUN 2006 at 5:49am |
AndromusGuild Master
Posts : 5538
Joined: 6 NOV 2002
Status : Offline | Originally Posted By Señorita Susana (1 JUN 2006 4:35pm)
CueCat! I remember when Parade magazine was making a big fuss about it. Oooh, so I read an article and then I can buy a device to scan the barcode and have my computer bring up a webpage related to it? I could sense disaster with that from the moment I first read about it.
Heh, I remember reading that article too. And my reaction was similar. The CueCat wasn't completely useless though -- I picked one up when I found out it could scan most UPC's, I used it for awhile to scan book barcodes when I was creating a database of books I own. Admittedly it didn't do this very well, it was pretty fussy in how it scanned. After awhile I just went back to typing barcodes in, which proved easier and faster in the long run.
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| 3 JUN 2006 at 6:23am |
SirDaveGuild Master
Posts : 4941
Joined: 17 OCT 2002
Location: US
Status : Offline | I'll stand up and defend Microsoft's products. IMO, people who like to say that 'Microsoft's products are bad' are playing to the crowd hoping for nodding heads when the nodding heads don't know why they're nodding.
Microsoft has had a pretty good record all things considered. Anybody who calls Windows crap doesn't have a clue how complicated making an OS must be -especially one that is supposed to survive all the abuse Windows takes from users who install, uninstall, over & over, download, upload, shut the computer off in the middle of a save file etc. etc. And then there are all those wizards out there trying to look for loopholes to hack into. Someone on this board even said that the last good Microsoft OS was Windows 2000! Huh? What do you think WinXP is? Win2000 with window-dressing! I've been running 3 desktops side-by-side: Win95-11yrs, Win98SE-7 years, WinXP-5 years. I'm very careful with what I install & uninstall and keep good backups. Haven't had any major down-time during all those years, yet friends all around me are constantly running into trouble- when I hear what they are trying to do when they run into trouble, it's pretty obvious why.
No, anyone who thinks Microsoft products are all crap has never done much in the way of real programming. I wrote a professional program that sold for 6 years- was based on a combination of compiled basic and C. It wasn't essentially bug-free until about year 4....and I didn't have anyone trying to bring it down (ie. hack it) during the first 3 years! It was a fairly complicated program with an integrated database, but it wasn't nearly as complicated as Windows.
Then there are those who have said that Bill Gates enjoys putting out buggy programs and is only interested in the $$$$. Couldn't be farther from the truth! If you knew him back in the main golden era of the birth of microcomputing (circa 1978-85), he was all about quality and this guy is one of the biggest philanthropists there is. He's not out to screw everyone; never has been.
That's not to say that Microsoft is perfect. No company that gets that big is. And there have been some crappy programs- WinME being perhaps the worst. But those are among the great minority of Microsoft's main products.
The future ain't what it used to be!
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| 3 JUN 2006 at 6:31am |
| Deleted User | I think it is Microsoft's business practices that irritate most people. They tend to take other people's products and sell them at a loss so they can drive them out of business. Example: Netscape, RealPlayer, Dreamcast (XBOX) etc. And don't forget that DOS was a program Gates purchased from IBM and wasn't his original idea either.
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| 3 JUN 2006 at 6:37am |
| Deleted User | Grrr. SyQuest drives were even worse than Iomega and at 1 gig storage capacity, they 'lost' even more data than the Zips. :-[
I actually know somebody who still has his WEB-TV. LOL
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| 3 JUN 2006 at 6:47am |
SirDaveGuild Master
Posts : 4941
Joined: 17 OCT 2002
Location: US
Status : Offline | Originally Posted By wowforz (3 JUN 2006 6:31am)
And don't forget that DOS was a program Gates purchased from IBM and wasn't his original idea either.
Bad history. Real history: Gates was writing various versions of Basic (the first Microsoft Basic) for various computer systems including IBM. IBM was looking for a DOS and Gates suggested they look into one of the most popular OS's of the time: CP/M by Digital Research. Digital Research played a little too high & mighty with IBM so Gates saw an opportunity: He purchased a fledgling OS, QDOS, from Tim Patterson in Seattle and almost overnite he customized for, and demo'd it on, an IBM prototype for IBM brass. Thus was MSDOS (PCDOS for the IBM) born- a Microsoft product licensed to IBM, not purchased from IBM. That was just one example of Gate's genious. Other examples of it: the original writing of a version of Basic for the various microcomputers of the time, seeing the future of an OS like windows when the prevailing emphasis was on programs built on DOS and seeing the future in the internet.
Microsoft has had a record of taking over other companies products or competing with them into submission, but some of that was fair play in big business, some of it was predatory. They've gotten their knuckles rapped more than once over that. But that doesn't make them an evil empire and evil-doing hasn't been the source of their main flagship products.
The future ain't what it used to be!
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| 4 JUN 2006 at 6:59am |
| Deleted User | We both are partially correct.
IBM sent the operating system Gates purchased from Patterson through their quality-assurance department and found it to be so riddled with flaws they (IBM) essentially rewrote it and renamed it PC-DOS and thus own half the rights to it.
So not only did Gates not write DOS, the version he supplied to IBM was unusable for the 8086 IMB line, causing IBM to patch the heck out of it and get it up to snuff.
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| 4 JUN 2006 at 7:36am |
MichalNGrand Inquisitor
Posts : 7058
Joined: 14 SEP 2003
Status : Online | Microsoft seeing the future in the Internet?
Microsoft totally missed the first wave of the Internet in the early 1990s. They were pushing their proprietary MSN (along the lines of CompuServe and AOL of old) and almost totally missed the boat. Only their established OS monopoly saved them.
Microsoft correctly recognized the Internet and namely browser-based applications as the #1 threat. It's really quite simple - if applications don't need Windows to run, MS is screwed. Windows and Office are MS's cash cows; Windows is the lever through which Microsoft exerts massive influence. If Apple, or God forbid, Linux, made inroads into the OEM market (probably not terribly likely at this point), things would suddenly get very interesting.
As far as I know, Google is today considered one of the biggest threats to Microsoft. The OS-agnostic and open nature of Internet is not something Microsoft has any reason to be happy about. And why should they, when vendor lock-in is the name of MS's game.
I wonder if MS rues the day they invented AJAX
I forgot my sig.
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| 4 JUN 2006 at 8:05am |
MichalNGrand Inquisitor
Posts : 7058
Joined: 14 SEP 2003
Status : Online | Oh, SirDave, you forgot to mention that QDOS was a knockoff of CP/M. There are many odd things in the MS-DOS programming interface which are vestiges of CP/M compatibility.
Microsoft is great at selling stuff. Better than anyone else. Great at finding viable markets and willing to do absolutely anything to dominate them. But over MS's three decades of history, their record of innovation is surprisingly poor.
And Bill Gates not being out to screw the competition? Don't make me laugh. That's what Gates is famous for. Here's what Wikipedia says about him (in a fair and balanced way IMO): "Gates is one of the best-known entrepreneurs of the personal computer revolution. He is widely respected for his intelligence, foresight, and ambition. He is also widely criticized as having built Microsoft's business through unfair, illegal, or anticompetitive business practices. Government authorities in several countries have found some of Microsoft's practices illegal, as in United States v. Microsoft."
I forgot my sig.
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| 4 JUN 2006 at 5:22pm |
SirDaveGuild Master
Posts : 4941
Joined: 17 OCT 2002
Location: US
Status : Offline | Originally Posted By MichalN (4 JUN 2006 8:05am)
Oh, SirDave, you forgot to mention that QDOS was a knockoff of CP/M. There are many odd things in the MS-DOS programming interface which are vestiges of CP/M compatibility.
Microsoft is great at selling stuff. Better than anyone else. Great at finding viable markets and willing to do absolutely anything to dominate them. But over MS's three decades of history, their record of innovation is surprisingly poor.
And Bill Gates not being out to screw the competition? Don't make me laugh. That's what Gates is famous for. Here's what Wikipedia says about him (in a fair and balanced way IMO): "Gates is one of the best-known entrepreneurs of the personal computer revolution. He is widely respected for his intelligence, foresight, and ambition. He is also widely criticized as having built Microsoft's business through unfair, illegal, or anticompetitive business practices. Government authorities in several countries have found some of Microsoft's practices illegal, as in United States v. Microsoft."
As usual, your bias is showing so strongly that it undermines credibility. Microsoft's record of innovation over the last three decades may be 'surprisingly poor' in your opinion and in the opinion of people who hitched their star to competing products that failed, but that's not the opinion of most people in the industry.
Like any company that ends up with a monopoly, Microsoft started to abuse its virtual control in the microcomputing/PC marketplace. There's no argument about that and Microsoft got slapped down for its anticompetitive/antitrust practices. This same thing has occurred in virtually every industry where monopolies have been present whether it was the original AT&T or present-day cable companies. But it's all about perspective: Microsoft couldn't have achieved its position without having put out a number of very good products. People who paint Microsoft with the broad negative brush that you have above weren't around during the formative years of microcomputing.
I programmed with CP/M as the main core DOS at a time when there were the competing Apple DOS, TRSDOS and then what became various offshoots of MSDOS, PCDOS & whatnot. Practically nothing was compatible. I remember Bill Gates when he had small booths at computer faires and was promoting his Microsoft Basic, his first attempt to bring some compatibility at a time when there were umpteen incompatible Basics: Apple Basic, Trs80 Basic, Northstar Basic and CBasic. It took the vision of people like Gates to make microcomputers (as they were called then) useful to the common man by providing a common platform and supporting products. Yes, he and his company overstepped, but that shouldn't detract from what he did for all of us.
Not to mention that a man who is a out to cheat and screw people willy-nilly is not likely to continue to give away what amounts to billions of his personal fortune for worthy causes eg. $750 million for worldwide vaccination. His foundation dwarfs all others.
The future ain't what it used to be!
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| 4 JUN 2006 at 11:09pm |
JetsetlemmingIntergalactic Janitor
Posts : 54
Joined: 16 APR 2006
Status : Online | I like Microsoft. I was just saying because of ME, how bad it was compared to the other windows products, deserved higher recognition as crap. I'm using XP now and I love it. There are some wierd things related to it that I haven't experienced before (any call to the "my computer" file, whether I'm trying to open it, search it, or have any program access that directory, takes about five minutes for it to display the same list of hardware that's been in this machine since day one), but overall it runs much better. I haven't had it crash or had to restart because of a problem yet.
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| 5 JUN 2006 at 3:31am |
| Deleted User | Yes I agree that Microsoft's monoploy has had the benefit of creating the defacto standard and uniformity that has made possible computing for the masses. And that counts for something.
I've read recently that Microsoft is worried over employee defections to Google and has reinstated some employee perks it had previously cut, hoping to shore up employee loyalty.
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| 5 JUN 2006 at 4:18am |
MichalNGrand Inquisitor
Posts : 7058
Joined: 14 SEP 2003
Status : Online | Originally Posted By SirDave (4 JUN 2006 5:22pm)
As usual, your bias is showing so strongly that it undermines credibility. Microsoft's record of innovation over the last three decades may be 'surprisingly poor' in your opinion and in the opinion of people who hitched their star to competing products that failed, but that's not the opinion of most people in the industry.
Name some great innovations coming out of Microsoft. Something like the GUI, networking, web browser, e-mail, word processor, spreadsheet, that sort of thing.
Innovation and success in the marketplace is not the same thing - in fact they rarely meet.
Again, I'm talking about innovation, not about some nebulous and probably ex post "vision". MS-DOS was a knockoff of CP/M initially, later with many UNIX concepts getting bolted on (directories, pipes, etc.). Early versions of Windows were cheesy imitations of the Mac. Windows NT is one of the very few original (although not very innovative) products ever coming out of Microsoft, and that was done by a bunch of guys from DEC (Cutler et al). But NT of course became important long after MS's monopoly position was firmly cemented.
I forgot my sig.
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| 5 JUN 2006 at 4:38am |
MichalNGrand Inquisitor
Posts : 7058
Joined: 14 SEP 2003
Status : Online | Originally Posted By wowforz (5 JUN 2006 3:31am)
I've read recently that Microsoft is worried over employee defections to Google and has reinstated some employee perks it had previously cut, hoping to shore up employee loyalty.
See this for a funny (and possibly true) story: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Lucovsky
I forgot my sig.
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