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I've subscribed to realtraders for several years, but am not very
responsive. A couple recent threads have brought me back to the surface for
a moment.
I exhausted a number of resources trading equity options and had to return
to FTE two years ago. I've kept my realtime DTN (stocks only) running
Ensign, which is tough to justify when I'm not trading. But it minimizes
the hassle of keeping charts, plus it's there if I take a couple days off to
trade again. Which isn't very often. At least I feel like I'm getting my
feet back under myself financially.
The job I found keeps me up to my eyeballs in software, being the primary
product developer for several graphical products running in msft Windows. I
subscribe to MSDN and run all of the msft OSs, on several machines, or
swapping in a differently configured hard-drive when needed. My main
development OS (by my choice) is win95, dual booting to win2k when
necessary. The primary app I'm building now is hosted in win2k, mostly
because it makes a better impression on the end-user, but also because one
of the hardware interfaces we use no longer supports win95 in its driver.
I'm seeing this more and more... new hardware just does not support win95 in
its drivers (ATI is another one). I think msft is hard at work here, aging
out operating systems.
I recently installed RedHat 8.0 Linux at work, and now run my Windows stuff
in a VMWare client, though I still boot native windows when I need to. So
now I can have a session of, for example, win95, another of win98, and yet
another with win2k (all independent, functioning simultaneously), running as
Linux applications. Definitely requires processor and memory horsepower for
running more than one or two at the same time. What I like about this is
mostly that Linux is so rock solid... if something in one of the windows
sessions dies, I just restart it. With Linux, machine reboots are a thing
of the past.
So I use 'em all, much too often. I hate windows and am grateful for the
opportunity to get back with Unix/Linux. There really is no other "reliable
Intel PC OS" in my opinion.
Prior to RedHat 8, I used 7.3... with this upgrade, the Linux community
(esp. RedHat) is really making progress. The install of 8.0 was actually
less painful than windows (and no advertising bs, either), and the Linux
apps are already better than most of the equivalent windows crap, especially
for the price! I use Opera for my browser (both Linux and Windows) although
my early impressions of Mozilla (evolutionary Netscape) are very good.
ANYTHING to get rid of pop-ups. The Mozilla e-mail client puts Outlook
Express to shame, starting with its imperviousness to viruses. But I doubt
that mainstream users will gravitate to a significant solution to the
computer virus problem... they do keep opening unprotected attachments.
I try to stay away from XP, hating the security and monopolistic issues. I
build our machines at work (as well as mine here at home) and am finding
win2k more than sufficient for what I need to use in terms of windows
product development. Very few of our clients are into XP yet, but the noose
is tightening... msft ceases supporting (and assumedly selling) win2k late
summer of 2003. Or so they say.
I've increasingly thought that msft's licensing practices would bode ill for
them, but the ax hasn't fallen yet, or maybe I'm not aware of it yet. We
are considering porting a few of our products to Linux (all of our embedded
products are already being developed there), but the extent will depend (of
course) on customer demand, and so far, Linux on the desktop hasn't migrated
very far with our client base.
My machine at home that receives DTN is a P2/333 running win95, and it never
crashes. No, never. Don't believe everything you hear about "W9x is SOOOO
unstable!!!... it's just not true. I run NO other apps on this machine, and
that makes all the difference. It is networked to my primary machine, which
is where I run the rest of my apps and have my internet access (which also
runs win95... and I reboot much more frequently). I don't dispute the
propensity of W9x to be unstable, but it is the applications which are
predominantly the guilty parties (and no, I don't excuse the OS letting an
application kill it... that's why pre-NT windows will always be just a toy).
I had to spend five months away from my home office several years ago, and
the Ensign software stayed alive unattended in W95 the ENTIRE TIME. No joke
and no exageration. That says something good about Ensign, too.
I just Friday bought some Hecla Mining (HL) on a stop... first buy stop
trade I think I ever did. I'm sure Norman will lambast my short-sightedness
(gong long silver), but it seems with all that's going on that commodities
are more and more where to focus. I have a pretty tight stop on this, so
don't mind getting yelled at.
So, I just wanted to mention a few things. I miss trading, and the feeling
of independence I had when I was doing it (not the poverty though). I do
need more patience when I trade, and maybe being back in the coal mine will
help that to happen.
Meantime... good trading.
Dick Crotinger
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