Posts by 45RPM

MPs urge UK.gov to use 1950s obscenity law to stifle online stiffies

Re: As one of the few people on this forum

Yes, thats kind of what I thought too (well, maybe a bit more forcefully than I thought it since what I really thought is 'Meh - who cares?') Now though, I'm swinging in favour of thinking that this is a damned stupid law brought about by politicians who haven't thought the problem through and who may well have lost the plot.

Whilst I really don't care if chickswithbigdicks or sweatyhairymilfs is knocked off line for the majority of the UK population (especially since it'll be relatively trivial to regain access), I do very much care if sex education sites like Violet Blue's (google tinynibbles, but be warned - nsfw) are no longer conveniently accessible.

So, I'm broadly supportive of the legislation provided that it is implemented intelligently and with due concern for legitimate and educational filth. I doubt that it will be though, and I hope that I'm proved wrong.

Crap turnover, sucky margins: TV is a 'terrible business' – Steve Jobs

Re: Jobs was a genius

Interesting. I don't watch much TV, so I haven't observed this on my 5 year old Sony flatscreen. I was going to chuck out the 15" trinny in the loft tomorrow, but (thanks to your entirely timely warning) I think I might keep it a little bit longer now!

Boffins demo FIVE MICRON internal combustion engine

Re: Intriguing.

Romeo and Juliet, actually. If Romeo got lucky, anyway.

Re: Intriguing.

In rocketry there is the "Characteristic length" L* which is chamber length over throat area.

Doesn't the same apply to fellatio?

Five unbelievable headlines that claim Tim Berners-Lee 'INVENTED the INTERNET'

Re: Macs ARE PCs.

I think this is an example of a typical newbie error - the conflation of 'PC' with 'Windows'.

Commodore 64s, Apple IIs and the like were (correctly) called PCs when they first came out. Then 'IBM PC Compatible' was contracted to 'PC' and noobs who wanted to seem au-fait with this new fangled technology stuff got all confused. Bless 'em. PCW magazine didn't help, in the nineties, when it pretty much dropped coverage of anything that didn't run Windows.

If it's a computer, and it's personal, then it's a PC - whether or not it runs Windows (and, of course, Macs are perfectly capable of running Windows these days). The Raspberry Pi is a PC. So, probably, is your phone. It's a bit of a meaningless term, really.

Does Apple's iOS 7 make you physically SICK? Try swallowing version 7.1

Re: Better than Android then?

Different to Android. You pays your money and you makes your choice. Getting all partisan about it is just silly.

Booze and bacon sarnies: A recipe for immortality?

Top journalism

Now that's what I call quality journalism - and backed up by a well thought out hypothesis too! Well done, Lester - that's good enough for me.

I plan to perform a practical experiment to prove this hypothesis this evening - a pub crawl followed by kebabs and a fry up, heavy on the bacon, tomorrow for breakfast. I'll do a full write up (if I remember) and, if your hypothesis turns out to be wrong and I end up a drooling imbecile or dead, at least I'll have had a bloody good time.

Another climate change myth debunked by proper climate scientists

Re: Obvious troll is obvious.

I've never met Lewis, so I don't know if I like him or not. I haven't read anything by him that's at all balanced, or that couldn't be construed as trolling.

Obvious troll is obvious.

Can we have a 'Report Abuse' button on all articles by Lewis Page, please?

Fukushima radioactivity a complete non-issue on West Coast: Also for Fukushima locals, in fact

Isn't it sad?

Isn't it sad that, whenever Lewis dribbles onto his keyboard, dissenters feel that they have to hide behind the Anonymous Coward curtain rather than face the (often, but not always) ill-informed pack drubbing that they'd get from his drooling supporters?

The Register comment threads are rather like a bus full of Millwall fans - so keep your head down or face a kicking.

And yes, I know that I'm about to avail myself of said kicking. I just feel that this pack mentality is rather sad - we're supposed to be geeks, and therefore a little bit too intellectually discerning to bay for blood.

Apple pushes back release date for 'dustbin chic' Mac Pro

Um, yeah, because the sort of professional who needs a Mac Pro really will be able to make do with a Dell or an HP. And have you looked at HP's service recently? In order to get software updates you need to be under warranty or have signed up for a service contract.

Sorry, Windows Fanboi Coward, I'll take my chances with the Apple Geniuses.

Rotten to the core: Apple’s 10 greatest FAILS

Missed two, got two wrong…

First, I think that you're being unfair on the iPhone 4 and the Apple IIc. The IIc is a lovely little machine - as long as you don't think of it as being a portable. The Commodore 64 wasn't (usually) a portable, the IIc is no different. The IIc was rather more useful than the venerable Commodore though (unless, of course, your main use was playing games.) I'm sure that you wouldn't regard the C64 as a dud - would you?

The iPhone 4. Seriously? I know that there was a lot of hype about antenna issues but, in my experience, the antenna issues are minor at worst - and certainly no more game stopping than the antenna issues suffered by its contemporaries. The iPhone 3G and 3GS, on the other hand, really were stinkers. I lost track of the number of iPhone 3Gs that I had to get replaced. Slow, clunky and fragile. I've still got my iPhone 4. Got it in the first week that it came out, and I've been using it (without bumper or case) ever since. I like it so much that I can't see the point of replacing it, at least until Apple comes out with an iOS that it can't run.

Misses? What about the original Macintosh? Yeah, yeah, I know. It was a game changer. But it can be a game changer and a bag of shite at the same time. RSI from swapping its woefully small disks (honestly - how hard would it have been to go for double sided from the start? 400k is not enough!), and a memory that was just embarrassing. 128k? Okay, I get that bigger chips weren't available during the design stages - but that just underlines the need for a more capable multiplexer and socketed RAM. Didn't think it through, did they?

Ah yes. And System 7.5.x. The biggest miss of all. The worst OS of all time. So bad, I reverted to System 7.1. Windows 8 users, get this - because it'll put your woes into perspective. System 7.5 had a bug that caused the Mac to crash regularly (Error type 11, if I recall correctly). That's okay(ish) - you just learn to save regularly. Except that System 7.5 didn't write the bloody allocation table out until shutdown - it cached it instead. So you could save all you liked - but, unless you followed each save with a restart, your work was lost. As for the error? They fixed it in 7.5.3 - by simple expedient of renaming it to something else. Genius. Shortly after Steve Jobs came back, Mac OS 7.6 was released. It was System 7.5, done right. I upgraded to that version right away!

Ban-dodging Mac Pro to hit Blighty's shops as Apple bows to fan fears

Re: A landmark moment in Apple history

Yeah. See what you did there. You conflated 'Most Users' with 'Most Pro Users'. Actually, even 'Most Pro Users' is a woolly definition. I would say that graphic designers, scientists, video editors and so forth, who demand vastly powerful CPUs, count as Pro users. Most of these don't want to augment their machines internally.

If by Pro users you mean hackers, programmers, sys-admins and wannabe IT pros, then yes. Most of these demand internal augmentation. We are, however, the minority.

A landmark moment in Apple history

With the new Mac Pro, this is the first time in the whole history of Apple that they're flogging a computer that isn't internally accessorizable*. Given that most people don't fiddle with their computers internally, I don't think that this will hurt the bottom line much - but I like mucking about inside my machine, so I don't see myself replacing my trusty last generation Mac Pro any time soon.

*I'm defining upgradable as improvements to what you already have, and accessorizable as augmenting what you already have - expansion cards, additional storage and so forth.

Falkland Islands almost BLITZED from space by plunging European ion-rocket craft

Wasn't this satellite originally called:

Gravitational and

Oceanic

Anomaly

Tracking

Satellite

Experiment

Or am I thinking of something else?

We've invented the FONBLET, says Samsung

How do they do it?

I always find it slightly odd that a company which produces amazing components (when I build a computer, a lot of Samsung parts make their way inside - memory, hard disks and SSDs, and big OEMs seem to swear by Sammy's CPUs. They're a safe pair of hands, you can trust them.) makes such amazingly shitty finished products. I've had a Samsung TV, and a Samsung Washing Machine. Both crap. They lie about their performance and the build quality sucks sweaty balls. Same with their phones - cheap for a reason. It's weird. They've proven that they can make a good product - now they just need to deliver on more than just components.

10 Types of IT managers from hell

Yup. That's me.

All of them. Now quit shirking and GET BACK TO WORK!

:D

Surface 2 MYSTERY: Haswell's here, so WHY the duff battery life?

Ditch Windows, save the planet?

So, quite apart from the extended battery life that we can all enjoy by ditching Windows for some flavour of *nix, think of the financial and environmental benefits. If the world ditched Windows today, how many power stations could we turn off?

Gone

ZX80

Easy. It's an unexpanded ZX80. No one will be able to hack that sucker!

Phones for the elderly: Testers wanted for senior service

Stupid Idea

My father is in his eighties. My mother well into her seventies. Neither are geeks - and both love their iPhones. Why? Because the iPhone (and Android, and Windows phone - smartphones in general) are enabling devices, and neither of my parents are thick.

Surely the service being discussed here is merely one for dribbling imbeciles?

The ten SEXIEST computers of ALL TIME

Ten is not enough

The problem with this article is that ten just isn't enough to celebrate good design. The original ThinkPad really deserves recognition, arguably even more than the MacBook Air does (and I think that the Air is one of the finest laptops available today). The Apple II, original Mac and the first iMac are more deserving of a place than the Cube. The C128 certainly doesn't deserve plaudits - just another beige wedge (and I'd have given the Beige Wedge prize to the Atari ST) - and leaving it out would have made space for the Psion Organiser or the original Palm Pilot. What about the AgendA? No room? Of course there was no room! The PlayStation got an undeserving mention. Mention that might better have been given to the NES, or the Atari VCS. And what about the Grid Compass? Far better in terms of design than the Spectrum…

Ah well, it's a divisive subject I suppose.

Office for Mac 2008 support umbilical chopped off

Re: Who cares?

…Until you update to an OS newer than Snow Leopard. Then it won't run at all, except in a virtual machine.

OneNote, Access and Publisher?

Publisher is rubbish, definitely the worst DTP program ever to be foisted upon the world. And if low end DTP is your bag then Pages does a far better job, as does Swift.

Access is the nastiest database the world has ever seen. Its cross platform sibling, Filemaker, is far superior (and it's amazing that the two programs were ever related). Personally, though, I'd be going for MySQL or something similar for true cross platform portability.

And OneNote is ably replicated in the Word for Mac Notebook view.

Honestly though, Office is not a joy to use - and, if it weren't for the issue of compatibility with PC users, I'd use iWork exclusively.

Furious Stephen Fry blasts 'evil' Reg and 'TW*T' Orlowski

I'll support Mr. Fry on this one

From a point of view backed-up with no evidence whatsoever, I'm going to call it for Mr. Fry. Why? Well, ElReg used to be my first port of call in the morning - it was erudite, well informed, entertaining and (fairly) balanced. Just what I wanted.

Sadly nowadays, like Viz, it just isn't as funny as it used to be. This would be forgivable if it was still well informed - but it's now yer barely informed, link-baitin', troll-attracting* Currant Bun of an IT site. Out of it's remit, out of it's depth and, sadly, out of charm.

Stephen Fry, on the other hand, never fails to entertain (even when he is ill-informed, he's still funny). All the Reg has going for it now is the Special Projects (yes, I still like the spaceplanes).

* and yes, I am aware that after this post I probably count as one of the trolls. So be it.

Ubuntu 13.04 beta touts search privacy - before it hooks in eBay, IMDb etc

The Internet search could be really sweet

I like Ubuntu, but I have privacy turned on. Not because I'm tin foil hat, but because I don't want shopping results mixed with everything else. The search could be greatly improved if it was categorised - search for a term and a list of your documents and applications appears (default). A row of icons also appears - Applications, Documents, Shopping (containing Amazon, eBay and so forth) and Internet. If they did that I'd turn off privacy and praise the innovation of Ubuntu.

Introducing the Open Source Rookie of the Year... Whoa, it's Microsoft

Re: Obvious troll is obvious.

I think that there can be more than merely compliance and non compliance. Starting entirely new projects and open sourcing them goes above and beyond - launchd, for example, from Apple or TypeScript from Microsoft. That said, I take your point (but I still don't think that I'm being too hard)

Well said…

But this is just another case of ElReg pulling our legs on a Saturday morning by allowing newbies to write articles for them.

Please stop, Vulture Central, it's too early for your teasing!

Obvious troll is obvious.

Apple is a big-time user of open source, but contributes comparatively little back, webkit and a few other projects excepted.

I got to this point and realised that you don't actually know what you're talking about. Comparatively little? CUPS? LLVM/Clang? launchd? Darwin? Zeroconf? All major contributions. Truth is that even 'ultra closed' iOS isn't particularly ultra closed. As with so many systems these days, it's a pretty good mix of open and closed - and you can even download the source for large parts of it from Apple. What iOS really is is locked down, but locked down and closed are two entirely different things.

If you'd picked on Apple for being patent hoarding bell ends then I'd have agreed. But name one big business that isn't? We were given a talk by a troll, sorry, lawyer at work this week (on patent law) and I could hear Vikings in a cafe.

The LINUX TABLET IS THE FUTURE - and it always will be

Re: Article is spot on

At the risk of bringing a whole ton of wrath down on my head, Ubuntu is beautiful. I don't like the Amazon integration, so I turned that off (it could have been done elegantly too - I don't know why canonical didn't). There are a few little other nits I could pick - but no more so than with any other OS. So no, Linux desktop is not necessarily a dog. There are beautiful distros out there.

Re: I still don't get…

An interesting point. Personally, I've heard about these barriers - but I've never seen them myself. Perhaps they melt away when they see me coming. iOS certainly enjoys getting in the way of the user, which is fine on a phone (well it suits me, anyway) and a perfect bloody pain in the geek arse on a tablet. Thankfully, jail breaking isn't an onerous task and then iOS is as malleable as any other operating system. Mac OS X is nothing if not flexible - I can do everything on my OS X machine that I can do on Linux (and more than I can on Windows, at least as far as my non gamer needs are concerned), but not everything I can do on OS X can be achieved as easily on Linux. So why do I have Linux? Two reasons. 1. I like it, and as a geek I see it as in my interest to be as informed as possible on the OS's that are currently available. 2. I can run Linux on relatively cheap, commodity hardware. The Porsche is nice, but sometimes the VW makes more sense.

Also, because Mac OS X is Unix (it really is, I promise you), its relatively easy to port between it and Linux (depending, of course, on the APIs that one chooses to develop with). That's very valuable to me.

I don't get the OPs point about Windows updating at the worst possible time, but I do prefer being able to defer updates as I can on Linux or Mac OS.

Russian iTunes offers smut video links

Why is it that…

…Russia gets a superior iTunes servicing?

OS/2 a quarter century on: Why IBM lost out and how Microsoft won

Absolute rip off, but not a toy

"The Amiga and ST made the Mac look like an overpriced toy"? Please. Do your research. Overpriced? Yes. Toy? No.

The Amiga came closest to delivering on that claim, the ST not even close. The only area that the ST could best the Mac in was in support for colour - in terms of storage and memory, the Mac had it licked. The Amiga added pre-emptive multi-tasking but, without memory protection, that isn't much of an advantage. It just means that you crash sooner, and lose more work when you do.

In 1987, Apple released the Mac II - and whupped the competition with much faster CPUs, more colour with support for higher resolution screens, far more memory and better support for hard disks. When A/UX came out (in 1988) it also delivered on pre-emptive multitasking with memory protection.

How am I so certain of these facts? Well, back in the day, when I was a student and the world, Mac, Amiga, ST and all were all fresh and new, and the 286 seemed like a hot processor, I needed to get a 68000 packing machine for assembly coding. Besides, some of my friends had 286s and my 8086 powered Compaq Deskpro was looking a little tired. So I considered the ST, and I considered the Amiga, and decided that I wanted something with more power and an internal hard drive. So I sacrified colour on the altar of the 68030 powered SE/30 (very few Amigas were made with more power than that, and no Atari STs as far as I know).

True, the Mac cost an absolute bloody fortune - but its power was undeniable. I still have it. It's got 32M RAM, and it runs the aforementioned A/UX. It still worked too, last time I tried it a couple of years ago.

Samsung posts record profits as Galaxy sales crush Apple

Re: Nice

No apps for iOS. I've never developed for iOS. And why would I want you to give me bad publicity? Not everyone is as stupid as you are. If you're really interested though, I've been working on network analysis software for Linux and Windows. No, I won't tell you what it's called.

My point was, and I'll try to keep the words short, that they should be able to switch easily - but that its the software that creates the lock in - not the hardware. Whether a user uses Samsung or HTC matters not a jot because, ultimately, they're on the same platform (Android). It's when they switch to iOS, Blackberry or Windows that they'll have the problem.

Re: Nice

Of course it's symbiotic, but the hardware is the shiny shiny thing that all the newbs can cream themselves over. The software is just the intangible thing that the world and his wife seeks to rip off or pirate. Truth is though that it is software that turns a computer from being a paperweight into the ultimate Swiss Army knife. And it is the software that is the most expensive part of the set up (and therefore the part who's portability should be valued)

Taking my setup, the software cost is more many thousands of pounds more than the hardware - even ignoring the stuff that I wrote. So I'm more likely to be pissed off if I have to change software platform than hardware platform.

As to the ease of porting a fart app, yes - very easy. But I grew past the hello world phase about thirty years ago, so that's not really my bag anymore. Don't worry - if you work very hard, you might grow out of that too.

Still, I'm getting a clear sense of how many newbies are posting replies to this infantile article. I guess you fancy yourselves bofh, yes?

Re: Nice

That, of course, is irrelevant because what are you going to do if you get fed up with Google? Honestly, I'm sick to death with non-developers masquerading as computer geeks. You give yourselves away everytime by over emphasizing the hardware (which is largely irrelevant) and undervaluing the software (which is everything).

Frankly, I couldn't give a monkeys about the hardware - and not too much of a monkeys about the OS - as long as I can easily port my software from one platform (that means OS, newbies) to another.

Windows 8 and the ‘Dad test’ stunts

Re: Speaking as a Dad

Personally, one of my main objections to Windows (and pretty much my only objection to the many Linux UI's) is all the superfluous bloody decoration going on. Macs look pretty, but there's no decoration in the UI - every pretty icon, widget and gizmo has a function. This has always been the case.

So no painful !Metro (which is a usable UI on phones, and very nice it is too - but scales badly to desktop systems). No dumb as fuck 'Ooh, look, I'm copying a file' animation (which is, admittedly, less irritating on Windows 7 than it is on XP and earlier). No stupid 'Well done me, I'm delet…'. I could get on, but you get the point.

Google deserves kudos for not following Microsoft down the pointlessly decorated UI route.

Speaking as a Dad

I've tried Windows 8 and it can definitely be improved on.

Windows 7 is a massive usability upgrade over Windows 8.

Ubuntu is also a massive usability upgrade over Windows 8.

Still, I'm very grateful to Microsoft for shovelling out more high quality entertainment. It's hilarious watching the Windows fanboyz justify this latest crock of shit. Now, wheres the popcorn?

Six months under water and iPhone 4 STILL WORKS

Given how fragile the iPhone is…

…this can only be explained by magic. And believe in magic iPhones since I have one. My iPhone 4, bought in the first week after release, has been immersed in salt water twice (and in the sink twice more to get the damned salt out of it), smashed into rock while I've been climbing, dropped onto concrete and stone - and just about everything that would normally result in phone death. It's uncased too, so it gets the full brunt of my abuse. And it's still my daily phone - how could I be so disloyal to the little tough nuts as to replace it?

It's chipped and the lens cover is MIA - but there are no cracks in the glass, so everything else is merely a slight battle-scar.

Ubuntu 12.10: More to Um Bongo Linux than Amazon ads

Re: @45RPM - So what?

Given that Ubuntu is an OS, not a business, I very much doubt that Ubuntu paid anyone. Canonical may have paid money to the Debian Project - I have no idea. You'll need to check that yourself. I'm damned certain that Canonical has advanced Linux's cause and code base more than most though, which in turn benefits Debian.

Sheesh. All these noobs. I'm amazed that they know enough about computing to find this website, much less sign up and comment on its articles. <shakes head in mock despair>

Re: Queue the freetards....

A haha haha haha ha! WIndows 8, a proper Operating System? Not just Windows, a proper Operating System? Windows 8? Really? Are you a Microsoft shill or just a kiddie who has only ever seen one operating system, and that on his Mummy's PC, purchased from Comet with Tesco vouchers?

So what?

I like Ubuntu. I like what they're doing with Unity - it's brave, and God knows that the Linux GUI world needs some bravery. Sure, it's often a step back - but it will lead to a better desktop eventually, I'm certain of it. Mac OS X 10.0 was such a step back that it was actually unusable. Vista was, well, Vista - unfortunately. Progress sometimes means temporary sacrifice (sadly, it sometimes means permanent sacrifice too!)

As for the shopping lens, yes, it's tacky. Yes, I don't like it. But look at it this way, there's no such thing as a free lunch - and Ubuntu is a very tasty lunch indeed. Pay up, cheapskates - and by paying you'll either have to put up with Amazon (and maybe buy once in a while, ensuring the future of Ubuntu) or put in a little effort to disable this lens.

As for me, I shall install Quetzal. But I'm really looking forward to:

Randy Rhino

Sexy Squirrel

Tarty Toucan

…and so forth. Well, we've had Whorey Hedgehog, so why not?

Vote now for the ultimate bacon sandwich

Anti-Fraud Voting working too well!

I guess it must be an anti-fraud system, but my colleagues and I eagerly started voting for the sublime Ungilded Sourdough from Salvation Jane - and the number of votes registered actually dropped. So did the penny - I suspect that we all appear to be on the same IP. Fsck.

Never mind. Sod the vote. But do yourselves all a favour and get down to Salvation Jane - it's well worth it. As for most of the other sandwiches (well, some of them anyway) I shall try them out. They look delicious! But seeds, nuts and cheese will always be an abomination in my mind, at least as far as a good butty is concerned!

Good effort Lester, by the way. This is exactly what The Register should be all about!

Eric Schmidt: Ha ha, NO Google maps app for iPhone 5

iOS users don't need maps…

…they just blindly follow everyone else!

Re: What about iCloud?

O Rly? How can that be given that Apple no longer hosts other people's web sites (that functionality was dropped with MobileMe)

UK.gov's web filth block plan: Last chance to speak your brains

A scandalous invasion of privacy

If I want to enjoy a picture or two of beavers and pussies, frolicking in their natural habitat, enjoying the company of one eyed snakes and a hairy clam or two then I should be allowed to and without having to apply for a special exemption (whose details will doubtless be made public, if accidentally, along with my phone number and inside leg measurement).

It is the duty of every parent to ensure that their computer network is secure - and, if centralized controls must be provided, then surely the way to do it is to make it easy for people to opt out of, rather than opt in to, smut. Similarly, every parent must make sure that their alcohol, heroin and supply of washing liquitabs is out of reach of their dear little darlings. I ensure that my children are out of the room when I hide the sausage, but I don't want the government to strap a chastity belt on me just in case I lose any sense of propriety.

On this matter though, I confess I find it hard to care very much. I care in the intellectual sense that I object to any damn fool attempt to deprive me of my liberties, and I wonder how thick the wedge is going to get. I care because, whilst the children (oh, think of the poor dear little children) won't get to see images that show how they were made they'll still be able to watch guns being shot and get plastic weapons. Seriously, man, that's fucked up. Make love, not war. I don't really care in this instance though, because it's not going to affect my lifestyle - and the Man hasn't come for me. Yet.

Apple Mac OS X Server for Mountain Lion review

Re: Okay, and now from someone who knows…

Okay. Now we're seriously off topic. In my experience, only SQL Server is faster on Windows than it is on Linux - and that's only because SQL Server doesn't run on Linux. If you've managed different, then that's great - I tip my hat to you.

Taking specific examples - which I admit are very esoteric, and of interest only to very few people, Windows time accuracy isn't worthy of the name. It's out by several orders of magnitude for what I require. Network performance is horrible. If I want to capture at 10Gbps line rate, without loss, on Windows then I can whistle. On Linux, it's eminently feasible. In fact, I can do 20Gbps (two 10Gbps networks), writing to RAID. Scheduler latency is ridiculous. Schedule and wait for a bloody long time (in CPU terms).

Add to all this the fact that the more clients I have the more I have to pay, and yes. I stand by my argument.

Yes, Microsoft has its own protocols. That's the problem. They're its own protocols. They aren't open. Batch file language is woeful and, whilst Powershell scripting is a huge improvement, it still isn't great. And again I say, it's Windows only. Microsoft has locked you in to its system. So we'll take Mac OS X as an example (because Apple is every Windows fanboy's poster child for the ultimate lock in system): If I use OS X to write a script (bash, perl, whatever) then guess what? Not only does it work perfectly on the Mac, it'll also likely work perfectly on every other damn system except Windows - and if changes are needed, they'll be minor in nature. So I can take my code and run on Haiku, Linux, Solaris etc etc. The same is true of compiled languages - provided that I steer clear of the GUI or restrict myself to X11.

Here's the thing. I value difference. I really like what Canonical is doing with Unity. I like the !Metro UI (on Windows phone, at least). OS X is a joy to use. It's all great. But, much as I value difference, I love compatibility. I love being able to take the only things that have real value on my computer (the code that I write) and put them on any other OS with only minimal effort. Windows tries to lock me in. It uses its own standards, not open standards, and I do not appreciate that at all.

Re: possibly the first Apple product that I really want to try out

For this use case, you really can't do better than Synology I reckon. It's what I use at home, and if you don't need something to serve Apple client systems seamlessly then a Synology is about as good as you can get. Sure, for a pure Mac setup then a Mac OS X Server system is as good as it gets, but for a mixed ecosystem (I'm running Windows, Linux, RISC OS, Mac OS X and AU/X (because I like retro!)), Synology is perfect. It's cheaper too.

Re: Okay, and now from someone who knows…

1.) Nope. I assure you that I'm not. And compared with Linux, Windows Server really is a POS PITA. It's slow (databases are faster on Linux, kernel latency is bad, network performance isn't great). Uptime isn't as good as Linux - we have to restart every six months, or it gets seriously flaky. Stuff that should be standard has to be installed separately, and often from a third party (ssh, for one, perl for another - but I could go on). And so on.

2.) I totally agree that you need more than a month to understand an OS properly. No disagreement here. My point was that you can't really comment unless you've had a month of immersion. I've been 'doing' Windows on servers since NT4 (in 1997, and I know that plenty of people here will be able to go back to NT3.x - not me though), VMS since 1992, OS X since 2001, and Linux since 2005 (I came rather late to the party, but once I got there I liked what I saw).