[Ham-Computers] Frustration with MS

Tue Jun 1 11:57:53 EDT 2004

Duane never said a thing about MS being "an upstanding citizen", those are your
manipulations of the context to support your own platform of perceptions, be
they factual or grounded in neuron fantasy.	

I am totally blind. I doubt that you can even remotely concieve of what life
without eyesight is all about, and furthermore, I hope you never ever have too
either. Closing your eyes for a few minutes and being engulfed in darkness is
child's play, opening them and the darkness remaining is the reality.	

Braill is used by perhaps half of those who are blind. The other half do not use
it for a variety of reasons that range from loss of fingertip sensitivity due to
a medical condition, advancing age, mental impairments, learning inabilities, no
interest etc. Braille has been the most beneficial single item for the blind,
some argue, ever. I somewhat agree with that.		

It is unquestionable useful, I could not get by without it for labeling items,
taking notes and so forth. I do not read books transcribed in Braille. The
average sighted reader reads at about 300 wpm, to him/her self. The very good
Braille reader reads at about 80 wpm. I am only a so so reader, about half that
speed on a good day. Modern Talking Books, conversion from the printed word to a
spoken dialogue and so forth have reduced the need for texts in Braille. 	

When computers first began to speak via TTS, (Text To Speech) a new world opened
for the blind and print handicapped. It was, and remains, a very expensive
alternative, but it is the only option taht really works. MS DOS was wonderful.
It provided the foundation for blind people to read all sorts of things. Their
own mail. Their own books. Then along came scanners and even more could be read.
It was wonderful! A road out of the darkness and associated lonliness. When you
are blind, remember, you can be alone in a room full of people, as footsteps
have no names.	

I was there, I helped make it happen. It was Texas Instruments who did it. I
have the original 90K diskette stored that contains all the LPC (linear
predictive code) that makes all that talks, talk. Freedom, at last!	

Then along came Windows. A death blow to the blind. It was graphic based, not
ASCII. I do not want to get technical here, as I realize many of you have no
idea about how a computer really works. you learn what you need to do what you
need to do, that is sufficient. that is fine. Suffice it to say, the characters
called 'text' are made up of tiny dots taht were assigned numeric values, this
was ASCII. Not Windows. It was 'GUI', Graphic User Interface, or graphic based.
Those text characters were now made from tiny graphic characters. Graphic
characters that had names that had no traslation to human speech.	

It took almost five years for someone, namely Ted Henter of the former
Henter-Joyce Inc. to write a program that would read the Windows OS. It was, and
is, called JAWS (JAWS For Windows) (The JAWS meaning, Job Access With Speech) It
sold then, and now, for $795.		

The more Windows and the GUI advanced, a benefit to sighted users of computers,
regardless of the maker of the GUI, the worse it becomes for the blind. What was
perhaps the greatest single benefit to the blind, ever, was, and is, slowly
going away.	

I am no fan of any graphic based computer OS, be it MS or whomever. The source
is not inportant, the fact remains, it exists.	

I niether approve or disapprove of what Bill Gates has done, what IBM did, what
Apple did or any other corporate entity. They all contributed to make what we
have as home computers possible. The losers here are the blind, not the sighted.
you have options, we do not.		

	I am not a fan of Windows, never have been, never will be. The free enterprise
system allowed MS to do what MS did, they are not alone here, it is not a new
story. Whether I personally approve of what Bill Gates did is of no importance.
Whether I personally approve of what Steve Jobs did is of no importance. The
fact is it exists and therefore must be dealt with.	

I am interested in resolving computer issues, not in personal attacks on any one
person, corporation or product. I have no interest in the politics. It is beyond
my control, but resolving computer software issues is within it.	

The ethnic remarks made here demeaning some races were inappropriate. Keep them
to yourself. They do not belong here. 	

People blame the 'stupid' computer and the 'blank lank software' instead of
themselves for not being able to understand it. Some manuals are worse than
horrible. Some user interfaces are so complex they are nearly impossible to use.
Software design is getting worse and worse, no arguments from me. But I also
know that many users do not take the time to read the manual, take a class,
think through the task and so forth. They expect instant results from simply
clicking the mouse and it happens. If it involves more than that, they pitch a
fit. There have been numerous examples of this on this list over the years. It
is to be expected with today's immediate gratification and 'who? Me learn?"
mentality being promoted by some of the educational systems.   	

So do not credit me with being a fan of anyone, as I am a fan of no one.	

The purpose of this list was, and is, to help others resolve computer issues. It
never was, nor shall it be, to kick around designers of software, founders of
companies or to argue the politics of the industry. Furthermore, there should be
absolutely no derogatory remarks about peopls of other races, belief systems and
the like. Think what you want, it is your right. But keep those thoughts off
this list, that is the law.	

Duane Fischer, W8DBF	

----------
From: mcobb <mcobb at cobbcomm.com>
To: Computers (or other) used for amateur radio, communications,  or
experimenting <ham-computers at mailman.qth.net>; Preston Graham <w4fda at pobox.com>
Subject: RE: [Ham-Computers] Frustration with MS
Date: Tuesday, June 01, 2004 1:28 AM

I rarely respond to alias wars since it generally continues the flames.
However, once in a blue moon a message
comes across that deserves, or shall I say mandates a response and this is
one.

Let me preface the following prose with some qualitative professional
history. I have been a design engineer
for MAJOR computer companies for 20 years. I have directly designed,
analyzed, studied, and taught products that
compete with and some the even Microsoft uses today. So, lets take a walk in
the park with Duane's prose about
Microsoft being an upstanding citizen. Let's walk backward from today to
their inception.

1. Microsoft has been found GUILTY of the Sherman Anti-trust act for
monopolizing third market. For you non legal
types, being the "leader" in a market, such as what Microsoft supposedly is,
does not make you a monopolist. Using
you dominate market position to price fix, or kill the competition does. So
save the BS about politics, MS is and
continues to be a mop list. The remedy phase was a joke. The original judge
was removed from the case and a new
judge oversaw the remedy phase basically resulted in a slap on the wrist.
Some of you are probably saying hey, who
cares, MS builds a product that is acceptable to me and why all the fuss. I
ask those of you who say that the following
questions, if your heart surgeon failed 1 of out 2 times would that be
acceptable? If your house was broken into
WHILE the police were sitting in the front yard would you be happy? If your
car needed a new engine every year
would you be ok with that? Probably not!

2. Sun  invented a language called JAVA. It would allow you to write a piece
of code that could run on any OS. What
a concept. Can you imagine going to a gas station with your Ford to refill
and when you open the gas cap you see a
sticker hat says SORRY, you can only refill Fords and Shell. Would you be
pissed? Would you take the car back? I bet
your would but that is exactly what MS has done. They don't want standards,
they don't want to compete. Why? It takes
a lot of patents and smart engineers to that and, well, C students need
job's too and they al go to MS. So, why was
MS so mad at JAVA? Why did they pay Sun 1.75B to fend off Sun's lawsuit?

3. A gent hired from DEC was hauling ass across the US and decided to stop
by CMU to check on some friends. He found
a kewel OS called MACH being developed at CMU. So Dave Cutler took the code
and hacked it and badday bing badda bo
NT was born. Oops, sorry CMU.

4. You all like the ability to stuff excel spreadsheets into a word doc.
Sorry folks, IBM invented OLE or object link
embedding.

5. You all ember DOS. Remember disk compression? Oops, MS was found guilty
of stealing that stuff from STAC electronics.

6. Microsoft is always equated with the design of the GUI. In 1988, a suit
brought by Apple was thrown out of court
because the judge said neither Apple or MS had rights to the GUI. It was
invented by Xerox's Palo Alto research center
(PARC) and they did not patent it, therefore, no one owns the GUI. BTW, PARC
invented the mouse and many other features
that Windoze users think MS invented.

7. Years ago, a gent who ran Digital Research, "Gary Kildall" inventor of
CP/M would have provided the OS for IBM's
PC had it not been for his concern with dealing with IBM and an I'll advised
plane flight that resulted in IBM
heading north to Seattle to ink a deal with a Seattle computing company
Digital Research would have been the provider of
the OS for IBM's PC's.

I could go on and on but why? Many of you have consumed Microsoft's
Kool-Aid. You think it's the only games in town. Home
computers existed before Bill Gates. Hell I made a Zenith Z80 based box in
the early 80's and it ran CP/M. The notion that
Gates and Microsoft has made this plant a better place is like saying
Hussein made Iraq a better place. The only reason
you use their crap is A: It's pervasive and B: It's embedded in every damn
PC from all the clown's you buy PC's from.

So, next time you see e-mail supporting Microsoft, try cheating on your wife
and then tell her hey babe, all the guys
do it, whets the problem! Lets see how far you get with that.

And for all you fence sitters or folks who want an alternative to the
convicted felons, send me an e-mail, I'll build you
a bootable personal copy of Linux with all the app's you need to read MS
based e-mail, you can read, edit and hack ALL Office
based docs, a web browser that isn't infected with garbage bugs and a great
development platform.

73's

Mike
KF6MPI

-----Original Message-----
From: ham-computers-bounces at mailman.qth.net
[mailto:ham-computers-bounc es at mailman.qth.net]On Behalf Of Duane
Fischer, W8DBF
Sent: Monday, May 31, 2004 4:25 PM
To: Preston Graham; Computers (or other) used for amateur radio,
communications, or experimenting
Subject: Re: [Ham-Computers] Frustration with MS

One thing all of us need to remember here. I get tired of people picking on
Mr.
Bill Gates. Good, bad or otherwise, remember - He made it possible for us to
have home computers in many many ways. Had he not been there, what we have
today
would very likely not exist.

We can no more fault him than we can the Japanese for killing us off in the
electronics market. After all, Bell Labs invented the transistor and we let
the
Japanese have it! We invented the VCR and let them have it. So what should
we
expect? We gave them the technology and they used it better than we did! We
have
nobody to blame except ourselves.

Mr. Gates has done one heck of a lot of good things for the computer
industry,
keep that in mind. He saw a market, he filled it and he made a lot of money
in
doing so. Many others have done the same. Apple would have died had Bill
Gates
not created competition for them, which made Apple better and they survived.
So
whether you like Mr. Gates or not, get off his back. We have all benefited
because of him, even if we do not want to admit it.

Duane W8DBF

----------
From: Preston Graham <w4fda at pobox.com>
To: Computers (or other) used for amateur radio, communications,  or
experimenting <ham-computers at mailman.qth.net>
Subject: Re: [Ham-Computers] Frustration with MS
Date: Monday, May 31, 2004 5:34 PM

TAKE IT EASY COWBOY!!   WE'RE ALL IN THE SAME BOAT, AND IT'S SINKING.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jim Isbell" <millenniumfalcon at cableone.net>
To: "Mail List for Ham-Computers" <ham-computers at mailman.qth.net>
Sent: Monday, May 31, 2004 3:47 PM
Subject: [Ham-Computers] Frustration with MS

> I get so damned frustrated every time I try to change something in
> Windows.  It must be because those Indians that program it do not have
> the same logic process we use.  It is NOT intuitive to a westerner.
>
> I am using XP and I am trying to change the default program for viewing
 .DOC files.  It is now defaulting to "Easy Writer" and I want it to
> default to "Word For Windows" but try as I may I cannot find the screen
> that is used to designate which program takes which extension by
> default.  I know its there but I cant find it.
>
> Can anyone tell me why it isnt under "Settings", the obvious intuitive
> place to look for settings??
>
> Can anyone tell me where those indians hid it????
>
> _______________________________________________
> Ham-Computers mailing list
> Ham-Computers at mailman.qth.net
> http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/ham-computers
>
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