User talk:Caesar Schinas/Archive 2

Happy to have you with us! (Loved the grunt)Nancy Sculerati MD 22:26, 22 January 2007 (CST)

A belated welcome

Glad to be interacting; I just hadn't run across your work before.

Apropos of your userpage, is Mac OS really an attitude, or a world view? I tend to think of *NIX as an obedient slave, MS as a rebellious teenager always testing limits, and the Mac, to mix metaphors, marching really well to a very different drummer while on Really Good Drugs. Howard C. Berkowitz 16:56, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the "belated welcome"!

I tend to contribute to projects like Citizendium and Wikipedia in (very) short spurts, with long gaps in between.

I first contributed to CZ when it was first set up, but as there were so few articles online then I soon lost interest as it was no good for reading articles, only writing them. And I'm not a writer...

I only came back again today, so that'll be why you haven't come across me before!

Interesting comments regarding OSes... Two points :

• OS X is Unix-based; I suppose that means it's an obedient slave too...?
• Why, if Microsoft is always testing limits, did they let their browser stagnate for so many years??? Just think where the web could be now without a 7-year-old browser still around!

I switched to OS X from Windows XP a few years ago, and never looked back. Quite apart from the fact that the Mac just runs smoother and has (IMO) a nicer interface; it has a really strong developer community and a lot of great apps which Windows just doesn't have. Apple also provide all the software for developing OS X applications for free, and make it very easy to get started, which suited me as an aspiring programmer.

With the release of Windows Vista a lot changed. Despite all the bad press surrounding it, I personally consider Vista to be Microsoft's first decent operating system. They are all set to continue this new trend with Windows 7.

I'm not a Mac fanboy (oh, how I hate that word). No OS is better than any another for all people. I respect other people's choices of OS. But for me, the Mac is best - at least for the moment.

Nor do I particularly like Apple as a company. Or hate Microsoft. I used to; but recently Microsoft seems to have become more customer-orientated - whilst Apple has become less so. Things change. Pity.

So what is your OS of choice (and why)?

Of all time? OS/360, not because it was the greatest code, but that I knew what it was doing and had the source.

For client compatibility reasons, and with the caveat I'm not primarily doing development but architecture, I have to use Windows. In the fairly short term, I want to have Ubuntu and Windows XP on my desktop, without reference to where the main services run. I prefer a LINUX when I have to do any data analysis.

My desktop, which I inherited, is an HP/Compaq business machine. For at least a month, I have been rebuilding since I learned, after the fact, HP's implementation is incompatible with XP Pro SP3. It frustrates me no end that MS keeps suggesting I upgrade to SP3 through its update advisories -- all I want to hear about are necessary performance and security. If they get to use WGA to validate my update rights, you'd think a rational update server would recognize the OS has an HP OEM key, that they'd have talked to HP, and not keep trying to install SP3.

I have gotten MS reseller status, but I know I'm never again getting OEM versions of MS software -- the HP experience has shown me what a value-subtracted reseller can do. If MS itself can't provide better truly technical support, LINUX becomes the answer. While I used to have a primarily Mac environment a few years ago, I became utterly frustrated with trying to get technical-level support answers from Apple.

While I lost my slide rule, I still have an abacus. Howard C. Berkowitz 18:04, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

--Caesar Schinas 17:55, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks...

...for the edits to CZ:Myths and Facts. --Larry Sanger 17:10, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

My pleasure! --Caesar Schinas 17:56, 21 November 2008 (UTC)