Re: Good news for SPARC

From: Carlo Razzeto (crazzeto_at_hotmail.com)
Date: 10/27/03 

Date: Mon, 27 Oct 2003 13:51:06 -0500

"Logan Shaw" <lshaw-usenet@austin.rr.com> wrote in message
news:ov4nb.20081$rH6.3908@twister.austin.rr.com...
> 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).
>

When you drag between locations on the same disk the default behaviour is to
move, when you drag between different disks the default is to copy. Windows
95 used to have make a link as one of it's defaults, but my experiance with
Windows NT 4 through XP the only two choices are copy or move... If you
don't like the default behaivour all you have to do is drag with the right
mouse button and select what you want from the list (copy, move, create
short cut).

> 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.
>

Windows is primarly a GUI Operating system designed to be easy for the
"common" computer user... In short, people who would not be comfertable with
a CLI. For people who are used to CLI's this will certainly be fustrating...
It's not an inconsitancy for the Windows Platform, it's the way it works...

> 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.
>

Yeah, that's a half implamented new feature... XP is the first version of
Windows to nativly deal with Zip files at all...

> 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.

Microsoft isn't really into the mainframe or unix style multi-user
architecture... That is to say when a windows network is set up it's not
setup where you have x users sharing one single mainframe/unix server via
mulitple dumb terminals. Microsoft has historically taken a more distributed
approch where each client does it's own processing with it's own apps. What
is shared accross the network would typically be user files, printers and
other such resources... Again, that's the way it's always been on the
Windows Platform...

>
> 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.
>

You are so seriously just being silly right here... That's reaching... What
they're giving you access to is the devices internal file storage and you
know that....

> 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.
>

Give me a break....

> I could go on, but I'm getting sleepy.
>
> - Logan
>

Carlo

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