Windows

About age or tradition

Daring Fireball writes about the reasons people who, in spite of dissatisfaction with Windows, won't switch to Macintosh. The article debunks some omnipresent myths such as the idea that Macintosh is more "locked in" to Apple than the Wintel platform is to Microsoft. A footnote suggests the iPod effect may have to do with "young people who haven't yet matured to the age where they're overly fearful of veering from the familiar. "

Possibly. But I'm not buying wholesale. I think there is another big difference between the lack of maturity to place where the familiar is uncomfortable. Rather it seems that teens today have a greater comfort level with various types of technology. Much more than those of us passing the three-decade mark, those of the next generations encounter a lot more technology a lot sooner in life. Along with a greater familiarity comes a much greater comfort in figuring out how different technology works.

A second important shift that accompanies growing up with technology. In older present generations, computers and technology are something new to learn. So much time has been put into trying to learn a few months behind those who created the technology that we've managed to loose site of the fact that our kids and their kids will come to know computers more as we consider mechanical pencils and ball-point pens.

Flaw found in Google's new desktop search

News comes today of a security problem with Google Desktop. The somewhat funny part for me is I asked a somewhat prominent blogger about this when it first came out.In spite of the years of blather by this person about open community, sharing experiences, etc. they basically said it was so simple that I was stupid to suggest such a thing. Part of the lesson here is to be very wary of people who repeatedly ask for help and when that help is offered can't be bothered to even reply with an acknowledgment of the offer (also something that has happened several times with this blogger).

It's about formatting

WPvsWORD.com has an article about differences between WordPerfect and Word. According to their assessment it boils down to Word is Object‑Oriented, WordPerfect is Stream-Formatted. They go on to show how stream formatting can be easier (if that is what you are used to). The WordPerfect vs. Word debate is to the legal community what the PC vs. Macintosh debate is to many others.

If you patch it...

To paraphrase a movie from a couple of decades ago - If you patch it they will come. The head of Microsoft's security business and technology told a group of Britain's high tech crime fighters that most security holes are not exploited until patches are made available. Using the same philosophy if we simply stop building hospitals there will be no one injured.

Style faux pas

The study of good style guides, such as the Tidbits Style Guide increases the sensitivity to poor style. Today I saw one of my personal pet peeves.

In a document there was a sentence saying that software "runs on Windows 2000 and Windows XP personal computers." There is no such thing. Windows (of whatever flavor) is an operating system made by Microsoft. They don't make PC's. If one needed to keep the personal computer in the sentence (though there is no reason to do so) it could be made into "runs on a personal computer running Windows 2000 or Windows XP." However simply removing personal computers removes excess verbiage.

Windows cheaper than Linux?

News.com: Microsoft has just paid for a study that says Linux servers for web portals are in some cases more expensive than Windows servers.

What price did they put on the security holes in Windows? At what cost do you hand over control of your machine to someone else? Linux certainly takes a great deal of skill to properly administer and secure from those wishing to do it ill. However the best of Linux administrators has a much better chance than the best of Windows administrators at keeping their boxes alive. Quite simply the Linux administrators don't have to depend upon Microsoft to patch bugs like those that caused the recent slammer worm.

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