Date: Fri, 30 Nov 2001 16:07:37 +0100 From: "Anthony Atkielski" <anthony@freebie.atkielski.com> To: "Mike Meyer" <mwm@mired.org> Cc: <chat@freebsd.org> Subject: Re: As usual, I disagree. Message-ID: <040c01c179b0$c01ff790$0a00000a@atkielski.com> References: <15366.58396.746782.116282@guru.mired.org><036901c17949$335163b0$0a00000a@atkielski.com><15367.35596.70893.123850@guru.mired.org><03fa01c179ac$e85cdba0$0a00000a@atkielski.com> <15367.40254.191788.665077@guru.mired.org>
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Mike writes: > That NT has to provide the same functionality > to be compatible with W9x is a sad thing. I suspect that, even if NT provided the option of filtering messages (and actually it does, to a limited extent, as do all Win32 environments), programmers would just whine about it. Most Windows programmers have never been beyond a desktop, and have no concept of multiprogramming, multiuser systems in which they must actually share resources with other software and respect security mandates. Any restriction on what they can do would upset them. > That may make the desktop more flexible and > functional, but not the underlying windowing system > which we were discussing. Maybe, but you need both to get anything done. > Unless you can demonstrate an application which > can't be done on X, the sheer number don't matter. The sheer number matters a lot, when you are looking for something on the shelves of a computer store. A _theoretical_ ability to do the same thing on X is worthless to the average user; it's meaningful only if it comes on a CD in a box. > Unfortunately, that channel *has* to exist > because the window manager couldn't function > without it. Yes. Another problem with windowed GUIs. > Just out of curiosity, if I'm using one of > the remote access methods for NT, is there > anything that prevents me from running a > program that opens a window on the screen > and thus get access to the same information? You'll have to be more specific. As a general rule, NT and Windows overall make little provision for remote graphic interfaces to the machine, or for interfaces of any kind, except for sharing of files and printers and other non-interactive services. One of the horrors of NT administration is trying to do _anything_ from a distance; all administrative tools are graphics-based, so you have to be running a Windows machine to use them, and the protocols used to connect them to a server are so complex and bandwidth hungry that very often you can't do anything at all. In many cases I've resorted to pcAnywhere (which just exports entire screens from the host machine) to do things, but it is dog-slow compared to a simple command-line interface. No matter what Microsoft would like to think, NT and its relatives are not timesharing multiuser systems in any practical sense, because of their excessive emphasis on GUI interfaces (and nothing else). Nobody suffers from this more than NT administrators. In some cases, I recall having to send an engineer to a distant customer site in person in order to accomplish anything, since no attempt to communicate with his servers remotely could be made to work. > In other words, the Windows approach is no more > flexible or functional than the X approach, just > a lot more expensive. You get what you pay for. If you want access to 100,000 applications, you have to pay something for that. However, traditionally Microsoft has only charged $30-$40 per copy of Windows on preinstalled machines. Compare that to $1000 or so in some cases for the microprocessor (easily half the cost of the machine, and often with at least 50% margin for Andy). To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message
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