Re: "Free" Software Strikes Again, or How I Ended Up With My Brother In My Airspace For Two Hours
- From: Alexander Schreiber <als@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 2 Jan 2007 00:26:13 +0100
Rob Thorpe <rthorpe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
hyperstring.net ltd wrote:
Josip Gracin wrote:
Ken Tilton wrote:
Flying east, same thing, but no announcement. I guess it was happening
every twenty minutes and they got tired of announcing the obvious. And
some passnegers (like my brother) simply leaned over and watched the
Giants game on my no-longer-personal video screen.
The best part is that it was free!
I agree. It would have been much better if the entertainment system had
been implemented using some commercial OS in which case the pilot
would've been able to call support instead of begging for help at
comp.os.linux.misc.
I saw a cash machine recenlty that had crashed and guess what, it
showed a WINDOWS 2000 LOGIN SCREEN! ! ! !!
That was out in the street!
That's nothing. I once crashed one and found it was running Windows
98!
I've seen load of cash machines crash to Windows 2000 login screens,
and airport info systems, railway info system, payphones. I've even
seen a weights machine in a gym crash to MS-DOS.
I've seen no evidence that free or open source software is any less
reliable than other systems.
As always, a fool with a tool is still a fool. If the company setting up
the systems has no clue, then using a good free software environment
only results in them not having to pay license fees instead of
delivering a good product.
And yes, I've seen too many commercial vendors delivering some
impressivly crappy solutions on free software, especially when the
vendor was hell-bent on treating $UNIX as "another kind of Windows, just
not by Microsoft". Including using such "clever" tricks as developing
exclusively on Windows, but delivering on $UNIX, using some kind of
almost, but not quite, working "compatibility libraries", sometimes
coming that ---><--- close[0] to re-inventing the WINE project.
HTH,
Alex.
[0] Yes, Pewlett-Hackard, that means you.
--
"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and
looks like work." -- Thomas A. Edison
.
- References:
- Re: [OT] "Free" Software Strikes Again, or How I Ended Up With My Brother In My Airspace For Two Hours
- From: Josip Gracin
- [OT] "Free" Software Strikes Again, or How I Ended Up With My Brother In My Airspace For Two Hours
- From: Ken Tilton
- Re: "Free" Software Strikes Again, or How I Ended Up With My Brother In My Airspace For Two Hours
- From: hyperstring.net ltd
- Re: "Free" Software Strikes Again, or How I Ended Up With My Brother In My Airspace For Two Hours
- From: Rob Thorpe
- Re: [OT] "Free" Software Strikes Again, or How I Ended Up With My Brother In My Airspace For Two Hours
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