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Microsoft

The Rare Glitch Project 218

Posted by Hemos from the yet-another-blair-witch-parody dept.
Thinker was the first of about thirty million people who wrote to us regarding CNN's coverage of "The Rare Glitch Project". Yes, join three student filmmakers as they descend into a building in Redmond, WA. Their mission: To find the legendary compact and stable version of Windows. Very amusing - I like the e-mail burial ground quite a bit.
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The Rare Glitch Project More

The Rare Glitch Project

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  • I'd expect to see this in a forward from someone with an AOL account, not on /.
  • 89% knows it is buggy, 11% knows it is buggy but is in denial. :-)
    ---
  • Didn't you know? It's politically incorrect to make fun of Microsoft now. It's all the rage to publish LinuxMyth pages and commission meaningless benchmarks; but say one word about Windows and you stir up a whole hornet's nest.

    The wheel is turning but the hamster is dead.

  • ...but I wish I understood the vitriol that some of you are pouring upon it.

    Often, accuracy is sacrificed for the sake of humor. "It never works" or "It always crashes" gets a cheaper laugh than "It works most of the time unless there are complex programs on it..." Gross exaggeration is part of humor.

    Were you truly expecting to get sophisticated, well-reasoned, and totally-accurate prose when you clicked on this article? I didn't. Some of the gripes about this sound like the sort of people who would complain about the historical inaccuracy of "Snow White and the Seven Dwarves."

    The only complaint that I've seen so far that I can agree with is the one stating that the article came more under the "humor" heading than the "Microsoft" heading. However, considering that the graphic for the Microsoft heading is humorous, this may be an indication that the two may be considered synonymous.

  • How about "And how many of you that voted for Win9x being unstable are actually running an alternative such as Linux as your primary OS?"

    I think that question might give a rather less biased result.
  • It's not that it's politically incorrect to make fun of Microsoft. It's that it's stupid. It's too easy. It's the epitome of the old phrase 'shooting fish in a barrel.'

    It's a profound waste of time and energy that could be better spent elsewhere, like fixing bugs in your favorite Open Source package, or spending time with your SO, or reading the panels on the side of a Rice Krispies box.

    It's trying to show off how clever you can be, by doing something that anyone with a sixteenth of a clue can do just as cleverly.


    --
    • This whole thing is wildly inaccurate. Rounding errors, ballot stuffers, dynamic IPs, firewalls. If you're using these numbers to do anything important- you're insane.


    Guys (and Gals), this is an Internet poll. If you take any of them (Internet polls) seriously, then you should really get your head examined, and I have some really nice Ocean-front property to sell you in Arizona.


    Steven Rostedt
  • Netscape doesn't crash very often for me; it does, however have a memory leak the size of the Colorado River. So, I ususally restart it every couple/few days.

    But, Netscape, being a closed-source program, is hardly typical. Everything else I run, other than StarOffice (which I only use on occasion), is Free Software, and it doesn't tend to have those kinds of problems (and when it does, it gets fixed pretty quickly).

    --
    Interested in XFMail? New XFMail home page [slappy.org]

  • As far as I know, Microsoft Bob has no Linux equivalent. :-)

    Didn't LinuxOne just come out with it yesterday?


    mcrandello@my-deja.com
    rschaar{at}pegasus.cc.ucf.edu if it's important.
  • Neither does NT.

    Win98 generally protects memory between applications...but not all memory....some Win16 DOS compatibility issues or something like that ;).
  • As of a few minutes ago, 1,891 people voted "no" to the question, "Is Windows 95/98 buggy?" Hey, wait a minute...doesn't Microsoft employ about 1,900 people? Hmmm.

    -Legion

  • A decent _FAST_ office suite.

    -Star Office & Wordperfect is SLOOOOOW - even on windows - and worse on Linux. I can start word in under 2 seconds, and even with all the stuff it does, it's faster and more responsive than any other WP.

    -A fully featured browser that is fast and works well. Plain and simple. Netscape is not an option.

    -Visual Studio. Frankly I can't live without intellisense anymore :) switching to and fro the documentation is lame.

    -DirectX. I have more speed.

    And to me, Windows (using W2K here) is just more responsive on my hardware. It requires more memory (tho that much more if you use X)

    -Java2 support. Blackdown seems to be dead, I'm looking forward to Sun offically supporting Linux next year. Pity sun's VM is slow. Oh, speaking of Java, I can't live without J++'s compiler either. What would you want? A compiler that compiles 100 classes and packages it into an install exe in 3 seconds, or a compiler that compiles 1 class in 6 seconds? :).

    -AntiAliasing - XFree86 just looks god damn ugly I'm afraid.

    Basically It's not really software that's missing, it's quality software that's missing from Linux. Linux has quality server and CLI software, but lacks quality desktop software.

    I know these problems will go away given another year or too...but that doesn't change the fact that it's not ready for full time use for me NOW.
  • Yeah, just like it was wrong to make fun of the disabled kids in elementary school.

    "Now, now Brian. It's not nice to make fun of poor Jimmy. There's nothing wrong with him, he's just different"

    Microsoft is kinda like Jimmy was, not quite all there but still worthy of treating fairly.

    Or...er...something
  • http://www.cnn.com/TECH/computing/9911/03/rare.gli tch.project.idg/index.html

  • Re:Check out the Poll (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Sure -- Windows is the bug, the OS is still to be released; silly.
  • Dont be surprised at the poll numbers.

    How many non-techies read techie sections of anyweb site?

    If I wanted to ask how the new em-blammo super magic bra fits, would I put it in a place that women would go, or a the sports page?

  • If you don't do mutch with it. There are people out there that windows is the perfect choice for. Apparently only 10% of people...

    But seriously, alot of these people claim that windows is unstable after f**king up their machines for years. Linux suffers the same slings and arrows from all of the people that complain that Linux won't work with their "insert hardware here".

    When Linux is all beautiful and all of the apps are stable, I'll start worrying about forgetting the kill command. But until then, at least linux has the kill command.

    ~Jason Maggard
    "A man can be a slave to irrational hate or irrational passion. Unfortunately the poor beast is only capable of being rational and even keel when he is dead."
  • I shall correct my mind forthwith.

    stance in a nutshell: MS fantastic due to bringing home computing to world. MS abomination due to megalomaniacal moneygod at top.

    --Remove SPAM from my address to mail me
  • It was different than everything else!


    Well, from what I've been told, there was an earlier film that had done the same idea, but didn't market itself as well (via the net).


    And to be fair, a friend of mine and I did the same thing with audio tapes, an abandoned apartment complex, a story about vampires and some props (for sounds and our own sake). We thought the idea was neat, but the end results were kinda lame, and incidentally that's the last time i worked with a vampire story. And I felt the same about the results of Blair Witch; great idea, lame film. If only I had known, and persued the idea a little longer!


    But the parodies I enjoy. So long as someone doesn't do a South Park parody.

  • I have to agree, an I'm not going to use an AC account, I personally think that linux and open source is the way forward, but the open source community is becoming just as closed minded as NT-only sysadmins ... there are certain things that I'll use NT etc for somethings simply because it suits the job, (exchange for example is the best mail server available for a medium sized company). If linux/OSS is to move forward, the OSS community has to move forward too. Note, I'm not logging in as ac, I'm quite happy for you to flame me / moderate me down, it only proves my point.
  • okay.. apart from the DVD player.. which is coming soon, I'm sure.. (too many people who use Linux want it to happen for it not to be on the horizon).. you gave good examples of specialized software that is not really available on Linux (someone prove me wrong here..) But if it's 3d rendering you crave..check out Moonlight Creator.. (forget what the URL is.. )

    Granted these are "corners" of the market that Linux has yet to exert it's influence on.. so Windows in this case is a better choice.. but for the most part, I'll stick with linux. And I wouldn't be surprised if Linux base-solutions arise for those niches as well..
  • all good points, although StarOffice/WordPerfect don't bother me on my linux box.. results may vary..

    Netscape has yet to spit up on me.. and it runs faster than Nutscrape on Win98 for me...

    I've used visual studio.. it's the BEST choice for authoring *Windows* applications.. I'd probably like CodeWarrior better or some other non-MS product, simply for the fact that it might not have such a close binding to the WinAPI.

    DirectX.. 3D rendering aside.. my graphics work pretty well on Linux.. i use WindowMaker at 1280x1024x16.. (larger res/same bpp as Win98) and it's faster than Win for me.. Diamond Viper V770 AGP 32MB..

    i agree Blackdown has fallen behind in it's java porting project (IIRC IBM has releast a JDK for Linux as well.. someone can verify?)

    Have you ever seen Enlightenment work on a a good display?.. it's much more rich and fun to look at than any windows display i've seen.. check out the screen shots at www.enlightenment.org..

    so.. software quality may be an issue.. but i can guarantee the issues will be resolved before MS releases the version of Windows after Win2000.. (Windows3000?)

    I personally would rather wait a year for a solid, stable, robust Linux than FOREVER for MS to fix what's wrong with Windows..

  • NT is very nice and very stable. I've got a W2K server at work....running on cheap hardware (except for that century memory stick i suppose) and it's been up for like almost 3 months....I haven't had to touch it AT ALL :) Quite impressed i am i am.
  • Well, I have a slightly different experience. For a few weeks, I had to run my computer on a piece-of-crap video card. I've got a dual-boot system. X would crash relatively often on this video card - but about 4 times out of 5, Windows wouldn't even boot. It'd give me a BSOD as it tries to display the login window.
    Fortunately, the many X crashes weren't the nasty type where you have to shut down remotely... ctrl-alt-backspace would always work. So Linux kept running, with only the minor annoyance that text characters on the console would get random extra pixels turned on.
    --
  • I've had Linux panic when i ran out of harddisk space :)


    I think you'll find that applications that crash NT will be ones that install kernel level drivers....and they're what crashes the kernel.
    I guess some could come down to bugs...but that's quite rare in NT.
  • What about...who thinks Linux is buggy?

  • A comment:

    The "QuickVote" on the side asks "Is Windows 95/98 a buggy operating system? Yes | No" Currently 3081 votes say "Yes" and 370 votes say "No" (89%/11%).

    Lets see the Slashdot effect on THAT!
  • >alot of these people claim that windows is
    >unstable after f**king up their machines
    >for years

    Very true, but a lot of us *like* fscking up the machine. I whined about windows with the best of 'em. Between Netscape 4.x, Network Neighborhood, Quake, and the LiteStep shell replacement, I had Win95 blue-screening about 3 times a day. Windows may be good enough in a business environment, if you push it too hard (like games and multimedia apps tend to do) things get ugly. Linux doesn't do that. Furthermore, Linux apps are sometimes unstable, but when they do crash, they tend to limit the damage they cause. It's rare for any Linux app to lock up well enough to require the 120 reset, like Windows crashes sometimes do.

    I'm not saying that all Linux is unconditionally more stable that all Windows, I'm saying it works better for me.
  • If you hack it
    and hack it
    and hack it
    and hack it. . .

    I guess this comment would be a good place for a geOShell [geoshell.com] plug.
  • You guys should up your standards a little on what gets posted.

    I've upped my standards already.
    up yours!
    ;-)

    -----------------------------------
  • Actually, it's for an embedded system.
  • yet.
  • That's funny ;) I have a kill command here in Windows NT/2000 also. Would you like it? Seriously I've been running Win2k for a month now, not a single crash, not a single blue screen. Maybe if I download 50 gigs of porn and half a dozen trojans from all the 37331 warez sites on a packard bell computer like all these whiners then it will BSOD.
  • I don't even know what to say about the possibility of finding someone who thought that the manuscript might actually exist. Before reading this I would have guessed zero. I guess I learn something new every day.
  • Well, it's realy a stupid question actualy. Since it's not quantitative it's essantaly asking "Do you wish Windows was less buggy then it is now?". This is like asking "Do you wish your car was more gas-efficiant?" Nobody in their right mind would say "No, In fact I wish my car would burn oil too!".

    I'm more suprised about the 10% that said "no".

  • Topic: "humor" not "microsoft" (Score:3)

    by homunq ( 30657 ) on Wednesday November 03, 1999 @12:42PM (#1565607) Homepage
    Yes, humor news has its place on /., but those with humorless preferences shouldn't have to waste bandwidth on stories like this.

    Besides, I like seeing the python foot in the icon bar. It almost compensates me, a lonely python bigot, for the fact that Java and Perl get their own slasdot topics but Python doesn't.
  • numbers are at 92% and 8% now.. (as of 6:46 EST)
    looks like the slashdot effect is working!!!
  • A few flaws????

    Ive seen better plots on episodes of TJ hooker. Come on, even you hit on the key thing here. They makers thought this would be shown on a TV to a few freinds, a few showings for folks on small screens. Putting this up on the big screen is like putting Jon Bennet Ramesy as the centerfold of Hustler.

    Not only is it a problem of scale but its a problem of intent. Blowing up a bad picture ona ascreen 20x its intended format and the flaws become 20x as glarring.

    Charging full price for this was one one of the many bonehead moves. Blowing it up in the press was another. Great, lets take a nice little student film and hype it more than GOne With the Wind and then expect everyone to fall over themselves with glowing praise.

    Flaw flaw flaw. If I used it to clean my teeth it would be dental flaws.

    The characters were so paper thin as to make the plot look almost solid. The only impression we have of heather is she whines, she lies and she controls a situation past its usefullness...Much like the movie. The other two make nice foils for her rantings, but even here it is so paper thin and flawe that they might as well have brought in JArJar and Yoda.

    The BWP was good for one thing. It is a great litmus test to see if someone can be easily dupped by hype and peer preasure.

    teach your children well
  • Okay... mr condescending unix here...

    let's talk about system uptime...
    let's talk about multiuser systems providing services to multiple machines and multiple users.

    Windows BSOD means: "I'm totally Fu*ked - computer terminated all connections and processes. Three finger salute!"

    netscape coredump means: "damn... how come linux netscape crashes so much. "

    I've had X crash (solaris running development enlightement comes to mind...) on a machine that serves NFS to a dozen systems and hosts a web and ftp site. The display was totally hosed. The system had zombie processe, but apache, wu-ftpd, nfsd were all working fine....

    I left the system that way for 2 weeks to schedule downtime that wouldn't affect users.

    now, a unix system panic is more like BSOD. I've experienced maybe a dozen or so system panics out of thousands of unix servers, most of which were due to very pre-release OS versions or hardware failures.

    ... so 2 BSODs a month seem like an awful lot to me. Aren't you ashamed that you've been conditioned to think that 2 BSOD's a month is GOOD!?!
  • I'm not one to frown on someone making a quick buck, everyone has gripes about low budget softwre and movies raking in big dinero. Making fun ofboth at the same time?
  • you don't, but my desktop machine just slowly became more and more of a shared resource. It serves developers, so a once-in-a-blue-moon temporary service interruption is within acceptable bounds.

    If I didn't have tons of other things to do (like posting on slashdot?), I'd move it into the datacenter on a console server.

    I now have a linux desktop as well that's my primary desktop, but as a testament to my old sparc 20, it's virtually indestructable/unsinkable/uncrashable.

    I believe that the sparc 20 is the 1955 Checker Cab of servers. so what if it's got a 60mhz cpu, it'll outlast all 'yer cheapo whitebox Pentium IIs! :)
  • And pray tell.. where can I download it from the site. Checked about half a dozen links and could not find it.
  • As much as I like vi, it is not a work processor, it is a text editor. It Word processors support fonts, tables, and various other ways of modifying the looks at setup of documents with a GUI of some sort. And that is one thing vi is not.

    On the other hand, I don't particularly need a word processor. Text editors are good enough for me.
  • Put up an article with a poll and link to it on slashdot and you can get you'll get skewed results...
  • MUAHAHAHAH!!! It's at 92% to 8% now. Uhhh... Quake1, 2, 3? Myth 2? Unreal Tournament? Those will keep me busy for awhile, among many others. Then there's games in wine, then there's the fact that once game manufacturers notice a large Linux user group for their products more will be pumped up. Mark my words, by the year 2001 we will be complaining about how damn commercial this Linux thing is and most likly praising a whole other, new, OS. Hardware comparison? Actually, quite a bit. Know your shit before posting. For pretty much any Windows program there is also a Linux program (only acception to the rule that I know of is PowerPoint, which I suppose is good but I never have the need for).


    If you think you know what the hell is really going on you're probably full of shit.
  • Windows belongs in a stable. Oof, I'm gonna get -5 for win bashing like I did last time, aren't I?


    If you think you know what the hell is really going on you're probably full of shit.
  • CNN just reposted the original article [infoworld.com] from Infoworld. Although they seem to have come up with the cool graphic themselves!

    JMC

  • Do you have anything better to do with your life?

    There is a concept known as "reasoned argument". Investigate it one day, if mom lets you out of the house.

    --Remove SPAM from my address to mail me
  • I'd rather see a link to pictures of scat-eating donkeys being molested with shucked corn cobs by a gang of gangrenous midget immigrants.

    Don't get me wrong, I run a network of Solaris and FreeBSD boxes, and I think Windows has as many problems as the next guy (as long as the next guy has crabs and a healthy dose of Ebola), but that was just piss poor. Humor at its worst. I thought the author was alluding to something done by somebody else...but no, just some lame-ass nerd with a soap box to tell his lame-ass jokes. And since there are so many Linux "I'd rather take it up the ass than admit linux isn't the best" advocates out there, it's destined to get hits.

    I'm disappointed that the article was posted.

    Hemos, we know you need to learn how to write, but now you make us think you need to learn how to read.
  • Is Windows 95/98 a buggy operating system?

    Yes, It doesn't work too well for computers, maybe it WOULD kick ass on the new buggys.



  • I agree, either the Slashdot effect is starting to take hold, or Microsoft really ought consider this input.

    Actually, when you think about it, how much of that 8% do you think are from MS Employees (and how much of that 92% ?).
    --
  • This was published on the back page of Infoworld this past week... CNN just repeated it.
  • Head over to here [geoshell.com]. That link was in the news archives, of all places. It isn't the direct download, but will supply you with the download area and a cool on-line cumistization thing.
  • NT does and will crash from a user program, Although I will admit it is pretty rare. Visual Cafe has done it before. And I've been told(First hand) that Director will do it daily.

    I know it is just luck, but I've NEVER had linux "panic" on me. I'm not even sure what it does. Does anyone know?

    Now, if they just made Visual Cafe for Linux:)

  • I'm happily playing CivCTP right now. It's a pretty recent and interesting game. Also I can't wait to get Railroad Tycoon. Addtionally, when i first got CivCTP it crashed regularly after 1 hour of play. I emailed loki and they sent me a beta patch the next day. The finished patch came out a few days later. Never have I received such attention when I've had difficulty with a game for the windows/Mac/Console platform.

    The beauty of linux is that due to the community standards/practices companies really need to embrace us (the community) or be ignored.

    If you are against Linux, why read slashdot? This is not meant as an insult, but rather as an eye-opener. You are obviously here for a reason, I'd suggest picking up a cheap Linux cd from cheap bytes [cheapbytes.com] and see what you're missing.

  • Does anyone else think something is wrong when a (supposedly) unbiased news site like CNN posts this story on its computing news front page? As much as I dislike Windows this is just biased as anything.
    This is based on the grand assumption that any mainstream news site lacks bias. At best, a few specific authors might do a good job at being fair or insightfull in their work. But an unbiased source? I'm beginning to believe such a thing doesn't exist.

    The only change is now we're seeing more mainstream bias against Microsoft. And we're seeing some positive bias towards Linux, with rare mention of other alternatives such as FreeBSD or BeOS.

  • I'm not sure that "It's Funny, Laugh." would have been appropriate. I read it, and not once did I come anywhere close to laughing, or even grinning.
    To each his/her own.

    I got a few shallow chuckles out of it. But then, I'm easily amused. The telling point, though, is that I didn't bookmark it. It wasn't anything special, after all.

  • what a horrid typo
  • You expect too much out of most comptuer users.

    Most anyone who has used computers and windows 98 generally can figure out that msnp32.dll shouldn't spontaneously disappear.

    However, that doesn't take much computer savvy, nor does it take much of an anti-microsoft view. Most computer users want to know they can run the latest games and HAVE to have sofware that is 100% compatible with their company's software (ever noticed people runnign and screaming because the company has Word 2000 and they have Word 97? yes, that's not at all a problem for most anyone who is reading this, but most computer users have never heard of /.) That makes a lot of OSes (BeOS, OS/2) not an option.

    Macs just have a bad rap. I've never understood that, for just about anyone's uses but those of a programmer, Macs are, in my opinion, beautiful machines. And I talked to a Mac representative a few months ago and I guess that they intend to make Macs as fun to hack on as PC's, so that wont be a problem soon, either. On top of that, macs still suffer from the first problem a bit. (and incompatibility really starts to matter more when you go cross platform)

    For just about everyone, linux/unix arent options either. Most computer users I know nowadays can't even handle a command line interface. If they can't handle "dir /p" how can you expect them to deal with "ls -l | more"?
  • Something's definitely wrong. I would like to think that CNN could stick to reporting *actual news*, not some ridiculous editorial.

    There certainly is a place for Linux in this world... However, until it has anywhere near the level of *modern* hardware support, I will continue to do all my work in NT2000/BeOS R4.5. BeOS has actual support for all the hardware in my Dell PII-400 system. Why should I waste time with *buggy* Linux sound card/PCI net card/Vid Card/*.* drivers when Be has been doing an incredible job keeping up with new driver updates?

    In defense of Windows 2000, at least Microsoft (I don't need to hear another troll call them M$) has had the brains to clean up the UI and error messages. "Bad Command or File Name" has disappeared, along with several of the reboots required in NT4. I'd *love* to see Red Hat match that with an actual user-friendly distribution of Linux.

    As for the NT4.0 "Service-Pack" complaints, I argue that it's better than the decentralized "homegrown-patch-for-everything" situation Linux involves.

    Finally, I've removed Red Hat from my system. Not because it's an awful OS... but because it's simply not good enough.

    -Adam Poulos

  • Why don't you just only read messages rated 2 and up? That gets you most of the good ones ... an no "first post" comment gets rated a 2 or 3 ...

    - Michael T. Babcock <homepage [linuxsupportline.com]>
  • What could you *possibly* run on Windoze that has no close approximation on Linux? Not to mention the fact that Linux applications are much more frequently update/fixed/enhanced..

    As far as the H/W issue goes.. if you're going to put ANY OS on a computer, you're going to want reliable, brand name hardware (not necessarily top-of-the-line, mind you).. and in that case, the odds are that Linux can support it..

    With regard to games.. yes Linux doesn't, at present, support as many games as Windows9x does.. but on the other hand if ALL you're going to use an OS for is to play games.. then you might as well just use Window anyway.. (I personally keep Windows somewhere on my box just to play said games.. anything worthwhile is done on Linux )

    Oh, and *nix systems are stable because they were written to be that way (over 2 decades ago), unlike Windows which was written to merely please the lowest common denominator, and buggily at that. At least linux is upgrading itself constantly in such a way as to not require the user to BUY at bloated prices a bloated piece of software that's supposed to fix usability issues, but quite often, just creates more problems, hassles.. etc...


  • Does anyone else think something is wrong when a (supposedly) unbiased news site like CNN posts this story on its computing news front page? As much as I dislike Windows this is just biased as anything.
  • actually I think they did, it was really small, around 4 secs, the host was Felicity DeShagwell (Heather Graham). Missed most of the skit, so I can't tell you what exactly happened.
  • Just for the record, Star Office has a Power Point clone, and it works pretty well. Thought you'd like to know.
  • Is a filter option to screen out Anonymous Cowards.

    Seems like these twits compose >=90% of the first posts, flaimbaits, trolls, and just purely assinine crap posts on /.


    john

  • What makes you think that is the opinion of the "mainstream"? I don't know exactly how many viewers one can be expected to get from a link on slashdot, but consider that the polls here normally have like 30-50,000 votes. Also consider that the mainstream would have given up on that story before scrolling down to the poll (it might have been on the first page for you, but I bet you don't run 640*480 because reseting the res is too difficult either). And that NO geek could have passed by that one without voting.

    I think the mainstream have no opinion on the subject. They have nothing to compare with, and Windows seldome crashes when in Solitaire...


    -
    /. is like a steer's horns, a point here, a point there and a lot of bull in between.
  • OK, I agree with you about the Netscape thing. It crashes so much it seems like I spend more time killing it and restarting it than I do using it. However, I have to disagree about X. I hear all these people complaining about the stability of X all the time, but I have never had X crash a single time in my life. Not even once. Hell, I don't even know what X crashing looks like. What do you people do to X to make it crash so much? And I don't even have "quality hardware". I have three year old, crap, bargain-basement hardware.

    Let's give X some credit. It's a good system. Windoze, on the other hand, crashes just about every time I use it. I can't say that windoze has much quality.
  • SNL said they wouldn't do a Blair Witch takeoff, then proceeded to do something kind of unrelated in the same style.
  • Now I think that mindless microsoft bashing is lame and annoying and done to death.

    And I think that mindless BWP bashing is lame and annoying and done to death.

    But I think the way this article combined them both was pretty clever, and it got a few lols out of me. It wasn't meant to be a review of BWP or a critique of MS. It was meant to be funny.

    The image is cool too, I like BG's eyes :)

    But this should have been under "Humor" not "Microsoft." It's funny. Lighten up and Laugh.

    -------------
    The following sentence is true.
  • In order for it to be a buggy OS, one must first consider it an OS.
  • it's a lame poll to start with. It guides the voters more than an IDC survey. Linux has bugs -- look at the changelogs for any kernel version. Solaris has bugs -- what kernel patch level are you running?

    It's now fashionable to hate Micros~1 and BillGa~1, just like it's fashionable to promote linux and take a no-idea linux startup public in hopes of getting rich off the IPO.

    .. I dare you to name *ANY* software product that hasn't had a lot of bugs at one time or another. (but for products other than windows, they tend to get fixed...;)

    and like so many ppl here have pointed out, the masses may 'dis' windows publicly, but they're (happily?) clicking away at their word docs, upgrading their service packs, and installing security patches for MSIE all the while.




    I love unix and linux in particular, but I honestly don't look forward to the day that braindead windows users become braindead linux users who will be calling brainded support folk who used to support windows for help...


    I can hear it now:

    "hello $MAJOR_HARDWARE_VENDOR support? My new computer with linux doesn't run right... I can't install the cool game from the cd that my friend let me borrow -- nothing happens when I click on setup.exe... did you try to reboot?"
    ---
    "My friend mailed me a cuuute little program that is supposed to make a sheep bounce all around my screen, but I can't get it to work.... help!"
    ---
    "I don't want to have to log on... can I just have it AUTOMATICALLY log itself in when I reboot?"
    ---
    "my ATI_ALL_IN_WONDER, winprinter, winmodem, winscanner, usb keyboard, usb mouse, XIRCOM pcmcia network card, and parallel port ZIP disk didn't install right... I can't seem to find the "add new hardware" section under the control panel..."
    ---
    "who is root? ... and why is he running things on my computer?"

  • As I stated in another thread [slashdot.org], I think the public's opinion is shifting. More and more people are truely unhappy with Windows.

    But what choice do they have?

    I'm a fairly moderate fun of Linux. I use it at work and at home. I use it as primary workstations in both cases. But I also have windows machines at both locations. I would be limiting myself if I tried to completely go without Windows. Its a current fact of life. Having said that - a good 90% of what I do daily does not include Windows. But it would be impractical to go 100%.

    The amusing thing is that I have some fairly cluefull friends who make their living within a Microsoft environment. They occasionally bash Microsoft too. Granted, they're a little more rational about it than your average foam-at-the-mouth Linux (or Mac) zealot. But even those who support Microsoft also criticize it.

    Does this mean there's a love/hate relationship?

    No. I would say its more of a relationship of practicality. The mainstream doesn't get passionate about an OS. And my tech friends? Their relationship with Microsoft is all business.

  • Why is it possible for one to be *against* Linux and a reader of Slashdot? Easy.

    I believe that Open Source is a great concept that has much more potential than it is currently enjoying. However, one can believe in Open Source/Geek Culture/Coding without taking it out of hand and becoming ignorant of positive changes in other Operating Systems. Linux certainly isn't perfect, and there are several features it could adopt from NT2000/BeOS/NeXT and even the MacOS.

    In the end, a majority of people use an Operating System to get *work done*. Linux has proven itself as a great server/hobbyist/hacker OS... However, it has yet to convince a lot of people that it is comparable to Windows... Let alone better than it.

  • I've made linux kernel panic. I just did it today. I think it was related to working with un-fsck-ed filesystems. But this was on a box which we were trying to get to boot as fast as possible... basically because the power might get pulled out from under it at any time... It's kind of a weird experiment actually.
  • People love to make fun of what's on top. It's as simple as that, really. CNN (or whomever wrote it, doesn't matter) knows that it'll be popular amongst *everyone*, practically. And even those who 'support' Microsoft by having it on their systems won't complain, will they? There's no entertainment value in that.

    An analog: I do remember hundreds of slightly anti-Spice Girl news propaganda right around their big three months or whenever it was. A reputable news source wouldn't think twice about running a cutesy column about 'marketed masses' or silicone implants, because *everyone* hates the Spice Girls, right?

    Well, no, some who-knows-how-many Million people bought their record. And listened to it.

    And installed it, did their work on it, wrote this post on it.



  • Yes, I would like to see RedHat come out with a user-friendly distro for consumption by a happy public *grin* :-) The "Bad Command or File name" comment was a trivial example of the improvements Microsoft is making. I'm impressed by Red Hat's improvements so far... but they've got quite a ways to go.

    I never said that Linux had worse hardware support than BeOS... I just said that BeOS has *exponentially* better support for recent hardware. I personally find it in Be's favor that they have designed an OS with current/future hardware in mind. I'm looking forward to a totally legacy-free/truly PNP OS (nearly every Linux'er I've spoken with recommends an ISA modem/netcard... hardly indicative of the recent direction of hardware manufacturers).

    In an ideal world, Service Packs wouldn't be necessary. I honestly think Microsoft has been taking a better approach lately. Instead of the old IE4-era mentality of "Cramming Web Stuff into the OS," they have chosen to add features that make life easier for the end user. Bravo! And, no matter what any Linux fanatic will tell you, there is *no* chance Linux is going to dominate unless it becomes successful as a consumer OS. BTW, I just updated my BeOS installation... It was the easiest/quickest/trouble-free OS update I've ever done. If you haven't yet tried it out... I'd highly recommend it.

    I find your post intelligent/well-thought and reasonable. Today's the first day I actually started posting and I was expecting to get a billion whining kiddies lambasting me as an 'M$ luzer' :-)

    -Adam Poulos

  • Every piece of software is buggy...you'd be silly to say it wasn't.

    But NT seems less buggy (because it prevents buggy software from doing buggy things).

    And Linux software is generally buggier. Don't deny it.
  • just as i started reading "The Rare Glitch Project", my Wintendo 2000 began sending so many mysterious packets to every workstation on the subnet that it flooded the firewall logs, causing massive packet loss and effectively DoS'ing everybody on the subnet.
    --
  • Everyone keeps saying "HEY, DID YOU SEE THAT POLL??? ONLY 10% THOUGHT WINDOWS WAS STABLE." Stop and think my friends: how many of those votes were from fellow slashdotters?

    I'm not saying Windows is stable; I'm saying that the poll, like any other internet poll, is skewed.

  • The Weimar way: Print more money.

    --
    Max V.
  • >And Linux software is generally buggier. Don't >deny it

    Maybe. But Linux doesn't generally crash when a program segfaults.
  • > 10% of the voters thought that Windows was NOT
    > a buggy OS!!!

    Incidentally, the /. pools have demonstrated that 10% of the voters consistently chooses the funny option, when one is available. Draw your own conclusion.
  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • well I thought it was pretty funny.
  • it ain't healthy to bottle up yer feelings like that... c'mon, tell us how you really feel...

    Oh, and I think it's midget immigrants in nun costumes...
  • Let's see.
    First, Word is a shitty word processor.
    vi is a word processor. Word tries to be a page layout, grammer corrector and 27 dozen other things which causes it to take way too long to do anything. I'll take vi on Linux or BBEdit on MacOS over Word any day.
    NT is stable enough for desktop usage, but that's not what it's for. No sane "average" home user could use it. Plus there are very few games or other "home user" programs for it since M$ can't even have compatibility within their own product line.
    ---CONFLICT!!---
  • What could you *possibly* run on Windoze that has no close approximation on Linux?

    As far as I know, Microsoft Bob has no Linux equivalent. :-)

  • Really?

    Windows, hmmm?

    Hang on a sec... "About this Macintosh..."

    Nope! Seems to be running MacOS 8.6. and EditDV. Sorry! Thanks for playing!

  • (It's hear, hear)

    As there really are no good metrics to measure such a thing as complex as an operating system on a general purpose computer, all you're going to get is anecdotes. You can read these all day and you may still not get anywhere. Every product has its limitations, like any other tool, and taking these into account, you can use all of them to your advantage.
  • It defaults to yes.... :)
  • > But NT seems less buggy (because it prevents buggy software from doing buggy things).

    No OS can prevent software from "doing buggy things". Nor is the (non-)bugginess of software necessarily any reflection on the OS. If I write a trashapp for someone's favorite OS, does that mean their fav wasn't really as good as they thought?

    > And Linux software is generally buggier. Don't deny it.

    I deny it. Cite some evidence and perhaps I'll concede that you're right. (Of course, it's going to be very difficult to cite evidence for a claim containing the word "generally". Perhaps you'd like to refine your claim a bit instead?)

    --
    It's October 6th. Where's W2K? Over the horizon again, eh?

  • ...went out the door not through the window. (Score:4)

    by gad_zuki! ( 70830 ) on Wednesday November 03, 1999 @01:41PM (#1565710)
    Is Windows 95/98 a buggy operating system?
    Yes 92% 7398 votes
    No 8% 632 votes
    Total: 8030 votes


    Nice odds, yet if CNN asked the question, "Would you be willing to install Linux today" the numbers would be the same but with Yes and No reversed. I love it when the mainstream bashes M$ while they edit their stories using Word running on NT, holding a Microsoft mouse after putting the phone down and ordering W2k for 20 workstations. I'm starting to believe they think M$ bashing is exactly like Ralph Kramden threating to beat his wife, in they end they're still very much in love. Awwww.

    "To the moon, Gates!"

    Then again if that vote was slashdotted...

  • Re:...went out the door not through the window. (Score:4)

    by gad_zuki! ( 70830 ) on Wednesday November 03, 1999 @02:37PM (#1565713)
    Naww, I used to work with a lot of people who trash windows and M$ all the time. Yet, when I ask them about other OS's its always, "Macs suck" and "Linux is for nerds, but I might try it eventually, but I'm busy saving up for the newest hottest videogame that wont run on Linux."

    Theres lots of anti-M$ people out there who are just like your average apathetic american who complains about the government 24/7 but votes Republican every year. "What can ya do?" Lots, if you're not lazy.

  • see, "funny" in this type of article usually happens when the target (in this case, Micros~1) is savagely skewered by a lethal combination of witty writing and ironic truth. The former was sorely lacking.

    Was anybody crying with laughter over this article? I hope not, cuz it just wasn't good writing and it wasn't funny, and it certainly didn't say anything new. I could write a piece of crap like that in five minutes, easy.

    I know humor is relative, but for stuff like this an exception has to be made. It reminds me of that "slashdot parody" site Roblimo posted called "hashsnot" or something like that. Ugh.

    I'm not being a grouch and saying don't put humorous stuff up. In fact, I'm saying the exact opposite - don't put up sorry attempts at humor. You guys should up your standards a little on what gets posted.

    --
    grappler
  • "CAPS LOCK FOR DUMMIES" ?

    --
    It's October 6th. Where's W2K? Over the horizon again, eh?
  • I suggest a slashdot preference option:
    Hide all First Post comments x (this would, of course, incude all variations and other dumb arse first post variants)... in fact, it would filter out *this* post, due to the FIRST POST in the subject and the comment. I'd be thrilled at this option... of course people would start first posting things like "Floof!" and "Nanotubule" instead, and soon we'd just have to decapitate them all......
  • Trouble is, if 99% said Windows 95/98 _wasn't_ buggy, they'd be lying or simply conned. It's not a popularity contest, people, this says nothing about Windows and everything about people's perception of Windows. Windows _IS_ buggy. Most big software projects are, and Windows is particularly buggy and people have lived with it for _years_ and gotten well used to its weird and chaotic behavior. _Journalists_ whose paychecks are heavily subsidized by MS have taken to writing articles about how buggy it is: "Hey, Windows is buggy! I can't go three days without it crashing!" "Oh yeah? When I wrote about how buggy it was, I got _buried_ in email telling me how right I was!" "Oh yeah? It crashes every day for me!" "You were lucky, for me it dies every thrrree hoours..." "_Luxury_..."
    It's more interesting to speculate on how many people actually understand how buggy Windows is, and what they propose to do about it, than to seriously argue about whether (ha!) Windows _is_ (hahaha!) buggy. (*ROFL*) Uh, if anybody is suggesting that Windows is _not_ buggy and that the constant and incessant reports of it being buggy are _jealousy_ or malicious lies... they should go see a mental health care specialist :) because their behavior is kind of psychotic, such a determined denial of trivially obvious reality can't be healthy :)
    Now, if you ask whether it's good to have people constantly making the same joke about it, that's another story- maybe you could make a case that this is a tragic situation that deserves sympathy and help and big donations to the Help Microsoft Afford To Pay For Debugging Fund. Surely it's only right to help poverty-stricken young startups like MS, who can't _afford_ to take the time to debug, help them get the tools and talent they need. With enough donations, somebody might be able to go through the source for RegEdit and take out almost a megabyte of completely unused resources that don't do anything! If only MS had the money to pay for somebody to do these little housekeeping tasks. Toss them a coin and utter a small prayer for them. ;)
    On the other hand, since they don't want to clean up their act, why not turn the knife in it as hard as you can? It's capitalism in action- it's a window of vulnerability- they are helping potential competitors create a market space for themselves, by shipping crapware all the time. Don't let them do it unchallenged, _lean_ on that vulnerability, it might make some consumer someday, about to purchase WindowsYetAgain(tm), pause and stop and go "Damn... who needs that?" and start down some other path of computing that they would enjoy just as much or more.
    I'm more shocked that almost 10% _don't_ think W9* is buggy. o_O

  • "news" for nerds (Score:5)

    by konstant ( 63560 ) on Wednesday November 03, 1999 @12:10PM (#1565756)
    The Author: Nick Petreley, a noted and repeated anti-microsoft (as opposed to pro-linux) grandstander The Theme: get traffic and ad impressions for CNN by trolling slashdot into citing their article The Bait: A limply humorous spoof on a moderately interesting movie. The Content: a puerile sissy-slap in the face of Microsoft, roughly equivalent to "nyah nyah, your OS is unstable" The Result: pay dirt. The gullible slashdot authority falls for it. Tens of thousands of ad impressions line CNN's pockets. Microsoft is *yawn* yet again trashed on slashdot. No provocation in the form of actual news is required. Humor Level: Three boston cream pies out of ten. Sucker Level: Off the charts.
    -konstant
  • hear hear (or is it here here?)
    Perhaps we can turn this into a discussion of true (technical) arguments, with cited sources, for and against Microsoft products, BSD && linux, and everything beyond. As this will just be a 'yeah MS sucks!' argument otherwise.

    I call on all the dutiful readers to come out with a good set of articles and reasons as to why we say what we do about who when where how, and why. This could be an interesting learning experience for us all if people take it seriously.

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