Re: Good news for SPARC

From: Logan Shaw (lshaw-usenet_at_austin.rr.com)
Date: 10/27/03 

Date: Mon, 27 Oct 2003 08:16:20 GMT

Carlo Razzeto wrote:
> Just out of curiosity, what do you find easy to use then? What exactly does
> it do in a way you didn't expect?

Sometimes, when you drag a file from one place to another, it
copies it. Other times it makes a link (or, in Windows
terminology, a shortcut) when you do the same thing. Perhaps there
is a rhyme or reason to this behavior, but I have never been able
to figure out what it is. It's so stupid that it's frustrating, and
I don't want to think about it, so I just drag whenever I want to
move a file. If it creates a shortcut, then I delete that and try
again the tedious way (click, select cut from context menu, click on
destination, select paste from context menu).

Speaking of shortcuts, they work through the GUI but not through the
command line. If you don't believe me, create a file foo.txt somewhere
and put a shortcut (also named "foo.txt") to it in C:\. Then do
"more < C:\foo.txt" from the command line, and it doesn't work.

Let's say I got some great new software for my Palm device and it's
in a ZIP file. OK great, on Windows XP, I can browse a ZIP file
*just* like it's a regular directory. So I do, and then I click
on some file Foo.prc to install it onto the Palm. But that doesn't
work. But if I drag that file from that folder to the desktop and
then click on Foo.prc, then it *does* install on the Palm. Windows
XP provides the illusion that this ZIP file can conveniently be
accessed just like a directory, but when you actually take that
to heart and try to use it like you would expect, then you find
it's only sort of like a real directory and sort of not. That's
because it's an explorer shell thing instead of a filesystem thing.
By the way, on the Mac, when you open a .dmg or .smi (both of
which are disk image file formats), then you get a folder that
opens and really does work exactly like any other directory, in
that you can install files from it, etc.

Also, Windows XP is a multiuser system, apparently. At least,
I can have multiple accounts, and there is supposed to be
protection between the two (if you turn that feature on).
But if I set up another machine as a remote desktop client,
then I can have user A logged in remotely or user B logged in
locally, but not both! Why, if I have a multiuser system, can't
they both be logged in at once? And if I remember right, when
user A logs in remotely and user B is already on, then user B
gets locked out without any warning. And (again, if I remember
correctly), when user A disconnects from the remote connection,
user B is not notified that it would be OK to login on the
local keyboard/monitor again. I guess they are expecting user A
to phone up user B and tell them that they're done, although I'm
not really sure if user A is even notified that user B has been
interrupted. Or maybe user B is supposed to just keep trying,
over and over again, to resume his session.

If I hook up a Pocket PC device, then ActiveSync nicely makes an
icon available to me called "Mobile Device". It's the filesystem
from my Pocket PC device, and I can drag files to and from it.
(Well, I can provided they're not inside a ZIP file that I'm
exploring.) However, though it's a separate (handheld) computer,
this "Mobile Device" icon shows up in the "My Computer" folder.
But it's a separate computer -- it's not "my computer", it's
some other computer.

My Windows XP computer has two Ethernet ports. I only have need
of one of them. The other has no Ethernet cable plugged into it.
I also have never made any effort to configure the unused Ethernet
port. But Windows XP is trying to help me, I'm sure, when it
warns me that I have a hardware problem by displaying that red
"X" in the lower right hand corner. It wants me to know that
"A network cable is unplugged." Aside from the fact that this
is inaccurate information (it could be a faulty network cable,
or it could be a fault on the switch or hub, or it could be a
faulty NIC, or it could be a driver issue, or...), I don't need
a red flag for the fact that network cable is unplugged. Maybe
if I had ever used it in the past and *then* unplugged it, I
would care, but since I haven't, Windows has an easy enough way
of knowing not to bug me about it. But the problem is that
*it* doesn't care, apparently.

I could go on, but I'm getting sleepy.

   - Logan

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