"This neurological relativism is not incompatible with adopting a belief-system involving predictions, assumed regularities or “laws,” valuations and ethical judgements, etc. But one recognizes each belief system as a gamble, “my latest best guess,” and does not confuse it with Truth, Reality or any other variety of eternal verity. Each belief-system, or reality-tunnel, is temporary — one except to replace it with a better system, more inclusive, more flexible, more amusing and more precise, if not by next Tuesday after lunch, certainly by the middle of next Winter."

"For years radios had been operated by means of pressing buttons and turning dials; then as the technology became more sophisticated the controls were made touch-sensitive - you merely had to brush the panels with your fingers; now all you had to do was wave your hand in the general direction of the components and hope. It saved a lot of muscular expenditure of course, but meant that you had to sit infuriatingly still if you wanted to keep listening to the same programme."

s/radios/linux/g ; s/listening to/running/

Nearly there. Time to start spinning in your grave, Mr. Adams.

Philip

At some point, I believe it was XP but maybe already in Win2K, M$ included zip/unzip capabilities in the "OS". It was incredibly slooooooooooooooooooooooooooooow.

For me, it meant that, exactly as before, Winzip or some such product remained on the list of software to load immediately onto a freshly installed box.

Same thing with the included firewall - I for one don't trust it one bit, I'd never rely on it for decent protection. At most, I see it as something that will con the pc-illiterate user into thinking s/he's protected without having to pay anything on top of the M$-tax, and I suspect that is the only reason they keep coming up with these bits that dupe stuff that's already out there.

If their anti-virus effort will be anything like these, I suspect nothing much will change...

Xeers,

Philip