Reasons why not to use M$...

[voidmain]

quote:Originally posted by SPoT:
Ok, back to the virus thing 1 mo time with feeling. Nothing is secure. Yes it is very possible to get into a Linux super user login and crash it, transfer info, or wipe it out. Linux is not unhackable. Can I do it? No. But can it be done and will you see it more and more as the OS is more commonly used? Yes.

Splotch, you still don't get it do you?  Did I ever one time say Linux was unhackable? No, why?  Because I have had a Linux box hacked in to before (it was a honey pot).  But why on earth do you continue to try and equate hacking with virus?  They are TWO DIFFERENT THINGS! Now, give us some valid *virus* examples. I've yet to see one. Linux boxes are hacked in to every day, for the same reasons NT boxes are hacked in to every day, because the administrators are dumb asses. The difference being, with Linux you can patch a hole yhourself and not wait on the vendor to decide if they want to put it on their priority list.  MS in many cases have taken *years* to come up with security patches.

[psyjax]

quote:Originally posted by SPoT:
I work in a buisness where I have to look at money every day. I have to look at costs vs. profits. To make money for my company, I have to give the best service I can to draw customers away from my competitor, or at least give then a service no one else can. Now if someone comes along and offers a better service for less, Im dead unless I adjust for the compitions product also. I have to keep up to be profitable.
No one has even tried to keep up with Microsoft, so now they are dead in the water, looking for a handout.

This is my exact complaint. I don't think M$ is offering a better service. They are forcing their inferior service on people and using their ill-gotten billions to push it on them.

What I am trying to say is that from what I have observed, M$ dose not seek to abide by the ideas of making a better product or service, their interest is in forcing competition to it's knees, kinda like a legal shake down.

Im sure in your buissness, whatever it is, competition is respected, and compeating between people should foster that sort of "one upmanship" between companies. This is a good thing, like you say it produces better products and the like.

M$ has no respect for this, and I see countless products that outshine their versions of things yet their versions remain popular. The reason they remain popular is because they forcfully discurage the use of compeating products.

For instance a while back, IE wouldent allow regualar Java to run on it so as to push M$'s compeating Java standard. Or bundling explorer into their OS and making it painfully difficult to remove. Another thing was reserving the key API's to their OS, crippling developers ability to compeate with M$. These things are not in the interest of competition, but rather a way to "trap" users.

And as for your energy and phone company Analogy, I see this as exactly what M$ is doing. Perhapse they do not have that level of expansive control yet, but they are gearing up for it. Every incarnation of their OS seems to get closer to it's goal.

The internet may not be food or water, but it is probably one of the single most revolutionary advancess in communication and the free exchange of ideas since Guttenberg's printing press. One company controling the users access and experience of this new medium would surely not be a good thing.

M$ has reserved the right to colect info on it's users, and they have a nice little agreement that can be retroactively changed by them to aid them in this goal. Please tell me how these things serve to make a better product?

Im sure in your buissness you don't go stealing your competitors ideas and then directly invest in their distruction and or dismantling. This is the sort of thing M$ likes to do. Do you go into public forums and spread bad rummers about your competitors?

Finaly, despite all this M$ is a monopoly. They have gotten so big, and so widespread that no one has a hope of compeating. So they don't need to make a better product because they have no one to "one up", in this case they just start making up rules and difrent ways to extort money from the user. Limited installs on their software, their wonderfull phone home policy, and their new introduction of spyware into thier OS.

Are any of these things in the interest of making a good product and succeding thrugh those means?

[ March 15, 2002: Message edited by: psyjax ]

[SPoT]

MS has gotten very large, but they built it.
They made the industry while the other guys did nothing. All of the software companys had the same chance in the begining. And when a company comes out with something revolutionary and standard breaking, they will get their moment in the sun. But the fact is that instead of creating their own product, they want to get into someone elses.

MS designs the software, so what if another version of java wont run on it. Its a MS product. They do have the right to create product that only runs with thier product, and not allow 3rd party product to run on it. What Linux product runs with windows in mind? But thats ok right?

 

quote:
M$ has reserved the right to colect info on it's users, and they have a nice little agreement that can be retroactively changed by them to aid them in this goal. Please tell me how these things serve to make a better product?

Another I agree on. But not that big a deal. The good part of this is it allows MS to find out what kind of hardware its OS is being run on and gives them the oppertunity to build a better OS around the hardware. The bad part is privacy. I dont like it anymore than you do, but we live with it every day. With your license plate number I can find out more than MS can with their software. I dont put anything I dont want anyone to know on my PC anyway. I wouldnt put that on anything.

 

quote: Im sure in your buissness you don't go stealing your competitors ideas and then directly invest in their distruction and or dismantling. This is the sort of thing M$ likes to do. Do you go into public forums and spread bad rummers about your competitors?

Oh boy. This happens all the time in the buisness world. I saw a example of it at my company. Another company was spreading rumors of a bankruptcy to try and create a doubt in our customers minds. They went so far as to say we could be closing our doors at any time. the world stock exchange is built on speculation and rumors.

As far as ideas go, Im sure that MOST of the people that have created the software Microsoft uses were compensated. As for the others, Ideas are just that. No copywrite, no protection. Changing a product to squeek by the copywrite happens all the time too. Its not fair or right, but its not illegal.


And the biggest point methinks all of you are missing is that you dont NEED Microsoft. You dont NEED Linux. You dont NEED a computer. Nothing is forced upon you cuz you dont NEED any of it. Its your choise. You guys chose not to use MS products for various reasons, but in my view, those reasons arent important enough to stop me from using it and some of these reasons would put millons out of work with no place to go. That is good for no one.

My reasons for saying Fuck Microsoft are the bundled software I have to hack out of it to make it run better, and save drive space. Thats all, well maybe not all, but the most I have to deal with. That and XP, the most usless bit o' software to crawl out from under a rock.

Alrighty, Linux Viruses.
Do I know an example. No, I dont. I dont need one. Today, tomorrow, next year, it will happen. How do I know? Cuz some people are twisted. If I look hard enough, Ill find one, or I can find someone to write it for me, or givin enough motivation, Ill write one myself. How hard it is makes no difference. The virus point is about as usless as the stability issue. 75% of all PC users will never see one, or a drive will fail before they do. My point on it was that nothing is secure.

[ March 15, 2002: Message edited by: SPoT ]

[voidmain]

quote:Originally posted by SPoT:
What Linux product runs with windows in mind? But thats ok right?

Samba? Wine? Konqueror? Xanim? VNC? OpenOffice? Gnumeric? Koffice? FAT/FAT32/NTFS file system support? Upon installation it takes care to preserve Windows if installed and set it up as a boot menu choice? (I can continue if you wish) Not to mention the incredible difficulty in making said OS try to interact with Winblows because MS keeps everything so much of a secret you have to reverse engineer the load of garbage to make any of the above possible.  Most OS vendors publish as much detail as they can to gain interoperability with their product.  Not M$, they don't want interoperability, they want total destruction of anything not M$.

   

quote:
And the biggest point methinks all of you are missing is that you dont NEED Microsoft. You dont NEED Linux. You dont NEED a computer. Nothing is forced upon you cuz you dont NEED any of it. Its your choise. You guys chose not to use MS products for various reasons, but in my view, those reasons arent important enough to stop me from using it and some of these reasons would put millons out of work with no place to go. That is good for no one.

What? Well you are correct on the first couple of things. We don't NEED any of it. But if M$ has it's way, if we WANT it, you'll only have one choice. Some of us prefer not to choose M$ products.

   

quote:
My reasons for saying Fuck Microsoft are the bundled software I have to hack out of it to make it run better, and save drive space. Thats all, well maybe not all, but the most I have to deal with. That and XP, the most usless bit o' software to crawl out from under a rock.

You've taken the first step. You may be happier if you move on to step 2, 3, and 4.

 

quote:
Alrighty, Linux Viruses.
Do I know an example. No, I dont. I dont need one. Today, tomorrow, next year, it will happen. How do I know? Cuz some people are twisted. If I look hard enough, Ill find one, or I can find someone to write it for me, or givin enough motivation, Ill write one myself. How hard it is makes no difference. The virus point is about as usless as the stability issue. 75% of all PC users will never see one, or a drive will fail before they do. My point on it was that nothing is secure.

Maybe if you actually used and learned about OSs other than M$ you might realize that you don't have to be convinced that viruses need to be a part of your life. I've already explained why it can never be a widespread problem. Primary virus stopper in the *NIX world is a good security model, and much diversity in system and user applications and programs.  With microsoft, every machine has the same code base and the same vulnerabilities.  So as soon as you create a virus it can wipe out the entire fleet. several of the past viruses passed along via a worm email (Melissa, I-LOVE-YOU, and their many variants) *could* have done real damage, but luckily for MS people the virus writer was not related to Bin Laden.
 Hacking in to a system is something completely different than a virus as we've finally agreed and any machine connected to a network is vulnerable regardless of OS.

[ March 15, 2002: Message edited by: VoidMain ]

[SPoT]

I dont worry about viruses. I have had them, got rid of them, didnt lose anything important. I have also had mutiple hard drive, RAM, BIOS and motherboard failures. The loss of data is something that can happen at any time. You dont need a virus for it. And all a virus really is is an automated set of commands. These commands can be written into any code on any OS. The Linux comunity seems to be more concerned about creating than destroying at this point and time, but viruses will emerge. Count on it. Its not that it cant be done, its just that they havent hit yet.

I didnt mean Windows products that run on Linux, I ment Linux products that run on Windows. And the answer is you cant. If you change the Linux code to DOS, its now a DOS program. They arent compatable. But Microsoft is expected to create a IE browser for Linux? This is an agument in the Monopoly case. MS has no skill in the Linux operating system, they are very interestd in it for profit though.

I have used Linux.
Mandrake 7.0 Had a horrible time. It was fun to learn something new, and I had to learn or it was no go. I liked the way it ran when I was done, but there were a few points that made me decide to drop it. Its not a bad OS, it just doesnt do anything I want it to do.

[psyjax]

Spot.

All well and good, but all of what M$ has done, and you seem to agree to some extent, is exercize some ruthless buisness tactics. This does not mean they are good software makers, or that their product is indeed supperior, it just means they know how to screw people over.

I think it is a bit idealistic to say that if someone comes out with something new in this M$ dominated world that it will have it's moment in the sun. The fact is that they will, and have been attacked by M$.

M$ does not compeat it divides and conquers. It is anti-competative in every sense of the word, and because of that it is a monopoly. M$ has infringed on copyrights, and weaseld their way out of some, but not others. The Java issiue for example eventually led to a pretty successful lawsuit from Sun.

As far as 3rd party compatability and choosing what and what not to let run on their OS, M$ does what they do in this area in order to force users into using their products or versions of things. Perhapse this is a logical buisness manuver, but if Ford made 90% of the cars then restricted it's cars to only using Ford gasoline weather or not the competition had better gas, I would say that is a rather monopolistic, unfair, and preditory manuver.

In the end, I just don't see how, in M$'s case, lack of ethics and underhanded tactics neceserly means that M$ makes a superior product and deserves the position it enjoys.

Furthermore, M$ controling the computer industry, and one of the largest areas of communication, is definetly something that no one wants. If, like you say, software is just a product, then it should behave as such. You should actualy own the thing and not have it behave as if you are being privaleged to use it. Ill be damnd if I buy a can of beens in the supermarket and have it call home to verfy it's registration and report what kind of kithcen I have  

M$ shouldent have the right to have such an insane licence policy. By this, I don't mean the law, but rather the public. People should be able to say WTF? No way, Im gonna go use this other OS. But the fact is, most don't see that as a choice, since they "need" to use XP, 2k or whatever.

So is it legal? Ya. Showld people have to put up with it? NO fucking way! But can they really do anything about it when their work or whatever forces them to use it? No.

So... this argument probably will go on ad nauseem. I think we both see the same thing, but interpret it in entirely diffrent manners. Personaly, I see nothing good coming from M$ now, or in the future. Id rather stick with companies that are actually trying to "inovate" to use M$'s term.

[voidmain]

quote:Originally posted by SPoT:
I dont worry about viruses. I have had them, got rid of them, didnt lose anything important. I have also had mutiple hard drive, RAM, BIOS and motherboard failures. The loss of data is something that can happen at any time.

You've obviously never worked in a corporate environment. I can't tell you how many dollars worth of time and software that I have personally wasted in trying to stay ahead of this bull shit on M$ networks. The point is, you were lucky. A hard drive crashing is a lot different than the damage a virus does.  

In one case a while back one person at our company received one of the forementioned viruses, it traversed the MS Exchange global address book and sent itself to everyone else in the company, other dumb shit users (and dumb shit IT techs (MCSEs)) opened the email after being told over and over and over never to open an attachment they are not sure of. It started traversing the entire company address book again until it brought our exchange servers to their knees.  Now, that wouldn't have been bad if it didn't also infect several executable programs on each persons machine, then proceed to wipe out all *.JPG, and many other file types.  It wouldn't have been bad if it only wiped out the files on their local drives but it traversed any mapped network drives on our servers.

Believe me, it was a couple of days before we got our web development and graphics shops back up and running and there was a percentage of graphics work that was never recovered. I don't know what the total damage was but you can be sure it was in the millions at my company alone. I basically had to write my own program and install it in the network logon scripts to go clean everyones registry so the virus wouldn't execute every time they started their machine or logged in, giving virus vendors time to come up with a new DAT file and the support techs time to get the updated virus software installed (the latest virus software would not detect the virus we got at the time we got it, later in the day they came out with a new DAT file, just when we needed it). Thanks for nothing Microsoft!  

And *then* to add insult to injury, Microsoft sent their auditors to our company and found that we were about a half million short on software licenses (not because we didn't pay for all said software, but because we couldn't *prove* we paid for said softare because our purchasing department did a poor job of keeping up with all the different licensing models and keeping all of the MS hologram seals).  So what does my company do?  Continue to put up with the shit, that's what.

 

quote:
And all a virus really is is an automated set of commands. These commands can be written into any code on any OS. The Linux comunity seems to be more concerned about creating than destroying at this point and time, but viruses will emerge. Count on it. Its not that it cant be done, its just that they havent hit yet.

No, you continue to be wrong.  A virus is a program that when run, attaches itself to other programs, that when run attach themselves to other programs.  And they are usually designed to cause damage. If a user executed a program containing a virus, said program can not infect other programs because the user does not have permission to modify system files. Period.

     

quote:
I didnt mean Windows products that run on Linux, I ment Linux products that run on Windows. And the answer is you cant. If you change the Linux code to DOS, its now a DOS program. They arent compatable. But Microsoft is expected to create a IE browser for Linux? This is an agument in the Monopoly case. MS has no skill in the Linux operating system, they are very interestd in it for profit though.

Oh, you mean like half (probably more) of the Open Source softrware out there?  OpenOffice, GCC, WU-FTPD, Apache, PHP, vi, etc, etc (want me to continue?).

     

quote:
I have used Linux.
Mandrake 7.0 Had a horrible time. It was fun to learn something new, and I had to learn or it was no go. I liked the way it ran when I was done, but there were a few points that made me decide to drop it. Its not a bad OS, it just doesnt do anything I want it to do.

If after giving it a serious attempt (usually takes many months of serious effort before you really latch on to the power) you come to this conclusion.  That is fine, it's your choice.  Isn't having a choice a wonderful feeling?

[ March 16, 2002: Message edited by: VoidMain ]

[SPoT]

Coolness  

Just so you know, I dont agree with the practices MS has. Im just saying its big buisness. It has been done this way since long before we were born, and MS isnt the only one doing it.

[voidmain]

Maybe long before you were born. I am as old as Bill Gates (yes, I'm still a young sprout). I just love people who say "Well, that's the way things have always been done around here, and by golly that's the way we're going to continue to do things!". What kind of world would this be if this were the norm and not the exception?

[Centurian]

Hey,

 

quote:Originally posted by SPoT:
I dont worry about viruses. I have had them, got rid of them, didnt lose anything important. I have also had mutiple hard drive, RAM, BIOS and motherboard failures. The loss of data is something that can happen at any time. You dont need a virus for it. And all a virus really is is an automated set of commands. These commands can be written into any code on any OS. The Linux comunity seems to be more concerned about creating than destroying at this point and time, but viruses will emerge. Count on it. Its not that it cant be done, its just that they havent hit yet.

Nothing is completely immune but linux is pretty much immune. Think about it. How long would it take for a virus to find the correct password for a specific linux superuser? Many months or possibly years. Can you imagine having to check "every" possible combination of characters using "every" possible password length. Then of course if the system is shutdown or rebooted before it finds the password the virus is effectively dead.

 

quote:
I didnt mean Windows products that run on Linux, I ment Linux products that run on Windows. And the answer is you cant. If you change the Linux code to DOS, its now a DOS program. They arent compatable. But Microsoft is expected to create a IE browser for Linux? This is an agument in the Monopoly case. MS has no skill in the Linux operating system, they are very interestd in it for profit though.

Oh you mean like Staroffice, Mozilla or maybe the Gimp just to mention a few. Actually you are both right and wrong in your statement. Yes the ones I mentioned above are cross compiled to many different platforms but the point is they do work on many different platforms.

Who in the world would even want IE on Linux (or any other OS for that matter) I can't imagine but if MS took the IE C++ code I am sure they could easily cross compile it to work on Linux. C/C++ works on, I believe, every platform.

 

quote:
I have used Linux.
Mandrake 7.0 Had a horrible time. It was fun to learn something new, and I had to learn or it was no go. I liked the way it ran when I was done, but there were a few points that made me decide to drop it.

If you have used Linux that how is it that you keep going on about Linux virii? You should know as well as anyone that the chances are less than .01% of that happening. As compared to Windows having a 10% chance over any 12 month period of gaining a virus.

Look here for confirmation of that. Although I must say that may not be the best source since they  seem to be trying to sell virishield but it was the first one I found.

 

quote:
Its not a bad OS, it just doesnt do anything I want it to do.

Ok now you have truely peaked my interests. What is it that you want to do that Mandrake (even an old version like 7.0) did not do? BTW Mandrake 8.1 is almost 100% graphically user configurable just like windows.

 

quote:You said in an earlier post  
MS designs the software, so what if another version of java wont run on it. Its a MS product. They do have the right to create product that only runs with thier product, and not allow 3rd party product to run on it.

No MS does not have the right to block 3rd party products. They don't have to build their OS specifically to work with the 3rd party products but they do not have the right to attempt to block a 3rd party product. That is exactly what a software monopoly is.

Also one more question. You have stated several times you hate Netscape. Does that also mean you hate Mozilla? The interface of Mozilla is very simular to that of Netscape. However Mozilla has all the power and none of the bloat. Mozilla is the complete engine that Netscape runs on. The Gecko engine with the interface is mozilla. It runs circles around IE and Netscape. I use Mozilla 0.9.9 under Windows and 0.9.4 under Linux (have not yet downloaded the upgrade for Linux as I have a slow dialup connection).

Anyway just my 2 cents worth.

[SPoT]

Ouchy Void. That must have indeed been destructive. I recieved the Chernobyl virus, and it had started rewriting my BIOS before I got to it. Very close that one. however, we use UNIX at work. I dont think there are any of those, but once again, its possible

And true, just cuz its been this way doesnt mean we cant change it, but it will take alot. But Im content to sit back and watch it shake itself apart. Then having learned something, pick up the pieces and start again.

Centurian
Im not going on about virii, lol. Im just saying that it is possible, and it will happen.

As I said, I use my PC for entertainment. I surf the web with an easy Browser, I play games like UT (I KNOW!) and Diablo2, and running them with voice in the background mostly socializing, not much to do at 2am when work is over. I beta test games, such as EA's Motor City Online(Crap since release) and the EA's Network Play System. But most of all I just tweak for entertainment, and give out tips to my friends. I loved this about Linux. But I couldnt run the other stuff due to incompatibility. And forget getting my freinds on Linux, lol. They dont even know how to change thier screen res. And dont even ask about my wifes PC experiance......

The next time I do an FDISK, I was planning on installing a distro. Im just not sure wich one.

[Centurian]

Hey,

If your planning to install a distro I would suggest one of these.

1. Mandrake (very easy install, Full set of graphical tools) I use this one.

2. SUSE I have heard it is even easier than Mandrake but have no personal experience with it. Also SUSE isn't freely available for download.

3. RedHat (very easy install, some graphical tools) I tried it but prefer Mandrake.

I also recommend you setup a dual boot system because not all windows games will run under Winex at this point. Although you could use VMWare. From what I have heard it is awesome and will run any OS virtually.

[SPoT]

Ill check them out. I have heard goo things about SUSE. A friend is supposed to burn me a disk, but he's been out of work with a broken wrist.

Oh yeah, I plan on dual booting, my wife will never figure out Linux.

Ill check out the browsers mentioned here too.
Thx!

Hardware support?
Soyo K7VTA-Pro VIA chipset, running 133mhz
GeForce 2 MX 400
Sblaster PCI 512
HP CD-RW 9100
Intel 2100 DSL (Uh Oh, its internal!)
and a belkin generic USB hub.
Think Ill run into any problems with those? Mandrake was hell to configure for my TNT2 Ultra and the VIA DMA. I did manage to get a Lucent Winmodem working in Mandrake, but it didnt work very well, lol.

[Centurian]

Hey,

 

quote:Originally posted by SPoT:
Ill check them out. I have heard goo things about SUSE. A friend is supposed to burn me a disk, but he's been out of work with a broken wrist.

Oh yeah, I plan on dual booting, my wife will never figure out Linux.

Ill check out the browsers mentioned here too.
Thx!

Hardware support?
Soyo K7VTA-Pro VIA chipset, running 133mhz
GeForce 2 MX 400
Sblaster PCI 512
HP CD-RW 9100
Intel 2100 DSL (Uh Oh, its internal!)
and a belkin generic USB hub.
Think Ill run into any problems with those? Mandrake was hell to configure for my TNT2 Ultra and the VIA DMA. I did manage to get a Lucent Winmodem working in Mandrake, but it didnt work very well, lol.

Don't know about the DSL but the rest looks fine. I have a Geforce 2 MX w/32 megs of ram and it works great.

As for your wife using linux if you setup the KDE it looks alot like Windows and works simular in many ways.

[voidmain]

As far as my wife and kids go. With Windows I got tired of hearing "Dad, my report won't print, what's this error mean?" and I reply "I don't know, read the message, I thought Windows was supposed to be easy".  I switched them to Linux and I don't have these problems.  It doesn't crash, the stuff works. For those point and clickers who do nothing more than email/surf/Office it is equally as easy as Windows but without the headaches. They surf all their web sites, they read their mail in Evolution (which is very much like the full blown Outlook but without the little virus problem). I was concerned that it would be more of a hassle for them as well. I have found that just the opposite is true. And I have more time to respond to these forums because I'm not out fixing their Windows errors.

I've only got one thing that keeps me from getting rid of one Windows machine and that is "RealFlight G2" an R/C flight simulator. I paid $300 for that software and it has this insane copy protection. When I try to install it under VMware it thinks there is a debugger running and will not install. Even though I've purchased this software I would have to crack it to use it the way I want to. Too bad there is not a Linux version. But rather than say "Linux sucks" because I can't run my G2 sim, I use Linux for everything I can. As soon as enough of us switch from MS to Linux there "will" be the demand and these vendors will have no choice but to port if they want to stay in business. We may have to put up with fewer "commercial" apps early on but the more that make the switch, the more software will come. Once MS is no longer the "majority" desktop OS we won't have to worry about our Operating system spying on us because of the motivations of the company behind it. Sure there will still be commercial apps with these motivations but it will be basically non-existent for the majority of users. And it will be more stable, with "MUCH less" potential of getting hit with a virus.

[ March 16, 2002: Message edited by: VoidMain ]