[Kamikaze]

Setekh... likes editing my messages. With a time machine. Err... yeah.

[Lightspeed]

Well, I like the idea

Maybe I should add one of those too.

[Shrike]

Originally posted by SuperCoolAl
hah all you windows suckers don't know what ure missing

And we don't care, either.

[mikhael]

Its good to see that Shrike has been elected LEADER OF TEH WINDOWS WROLD! Some of them do care, Shrike. If they didn't, fewer of us would be running *nix on our machines.

[Shrike]

If I was the leader of the windows world there'd be more people getting poked in the eye, I can tell you that much.  And all computers would have a 'slap' button.  That would kick ass.

If you prefer to use something other than windows, fine.  If you've found that you like it better since you switched, fine.  Feel free to tell us why you find it better, maybe someone else will switch because of you.  If you want to declare how much cooler you are, how many new friends you have in the anti-windows underground and how much bigger of an e-penis you have because you don't run windows and how everyone who still uses it is inferior, well, you deserve all the scorn that goes you way.

[Turnsky]

Originally posted by SuperCoolAl
well, it took me the better part of a day but i finally got red hat 9 installed to dual boot with windows

hah all you windows suckers don't know what ure missing

i do, after learning a year of nothing but PURE unix based systems, including Solaris (which was more buggy than any windows OS i've used)

in short, why the hell would you even BOTHER to boast that you're posting from a linux install..

*On a linux only forum*
"Lookit me!.. i'm posting from a WINXP machine... or a MAC machine!"

you can see my point with this..

the only reason one would say that windows sucks, etc, is cause they suck at using them..

"a bad tradesman always blames his tools"

[Stryke 9]

Damn straight! MS-DOS alla way!

[mikhael]

Originally posted by Turnsky
the only reason one would say that windows sucks, etc, is cause they suck at using them..

"a bad tradesman always blames his tools"

You know, I'd normally agree with that sentiment--except it doesn't apply here. Windows and things like Office, etc can be very useful and indeed in skilled hands can be extremely effective.

That does NOT however remove the fact that Win9x pretty much sucks. The trivial amount of effort it takes to completely subvert even an up to date, completely patched Win9x box is pathetic. The same applies to ANY OS that lets (or encourages) the user to run in an administrative "all access" mode (yes, this includes you, Lindows).

Even NT based systems are pretty easy to rape when fully patched and up to date, because the system actively trusts that no one will try to screw it up or subvert it. Services and compatibility layers that have absolutely no business running are enabled by default. Services that should be running, ship with vulnerabilities that lay unpatched and unaddressed for as long as a year (witness the current URL spoofing bug, now going on 9mos, completely unaddressed).

When Microsoft gets it into their heads to create something new, they do a good job at implementing a fairly complete and comprehensive, and terribly useful thing. THey just don't think through their decisions. Take, for example, Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Office. Microsoft introduced a handy dandy way to make Office more useful: they created Visual Basic for Applications. This scripting allowed you to create things like a word document that was always up to date with data in a database or emails that implemented forms for voting on issues. Unfortunately, they made the system insecure: scripts in Office files and Outlook emails run in the context of the currently logged in user (or in some cases in the System context!). This results in it being trivial to create email viruses. Before the advent of VBA, computer geeks made jokes about viruses that you could catch from your email. After the advent of VBA, the joke wasn't funny anymore. Outlook made the problem actively worse by allowing scripts to be run just by looking at the email AND by defaulting to showing selected emails in the preview pane (which counts as looking at the email and triggers the scripts). All of these behaviors can actually be addressed. You can disable, or uninstall most of them. The problem is that they're all enabled and active by default. The result: vendors ship machines and users install systems to be vulnerable to malicious code as soon as they are plugged in.

Entertainingly when problems are finally addressed, they are often addressed in completely broken ways. Take, for instance, Outlook and malicious executable code as attachments. We've probably all gotten an email with a virus included as an attachment. Many users would just mindlessly click on the attachment, thereby infecting their systems (remember, these things run in the context of the user, and the user is almost always an a user with the ability to install software, or they are on 9x where there's no concept of users). Microsoft's solution? Disable the ability to open up all attachments that might be malicious. Doesn't sound like a bad deal on the surface, does it? Unfortunately, it prevents legitimate code from being passed around in the wonderfully organic manner that email otherwise allows. The user is not even given an option to say, 'yes I know it might be bad, but I'm a grown up and I know that Its okay so let me open it, thanks'. As I recall, the user is even prevented from SAVING the file to the hard drive. A better solution is that provided by clients such as Mozilla's mailler: executables have to be saved to the hard drive first. The user then has to go run the file manually. It doesn't protect a stupid user from himself, but neither does the Microsoft method (they can, after all, just turn off the blocker entirely and never have to worry about it).

If you like, I could go on. Hell, I can explain where *nix distributions make some of these same mistakes. I can also explain how good design makes these mistakes trivial on those systems.

Remember: a bad craftsman blames his tools. A good craftsman recognizes inferior tools and obtains and uses better quality ones.

[Zarax]

Or tries to improve the ones in their hands...
I was just like you guys until a few years ago...
Until i decided to get MS guys and tell them what their software problems were...
After that i realized that the problem was the lack of feedback...
Talking with MS guys about a problem can be a difficult task, but once you start to act like a reasonable person with them things improves quite well...
Currently i'm even running a project to bring MS into Open Source, of course this is not an easy and fast process but it's doable...
What drives me crazy (in not a much different way than Kazan's) are three things:

1) People that uses everything they have to attack MS, and have no reticence into spreading false things.
2) Prejudices so that anything that comes from MS must be bad... ok, their software might not be the finest example of technical prowess but since win2k it runs stable and people have much less problems.
3) The damned way linux is getting screwed away by the big corps, being big blue the leader...
What you fail to see in my opinion is that the open nature of linux can spell it's end as free software...
Let out what SCO is doing, the lack of specific patent holders is a relevant lawyer vulnerability that needs to be addressed...
Who remember early Divx knows that it started as an open codec but now is a closed commercial project, just as Real Media, Quick Time or Windows Media...
Yes, you got X-vid, but what if the leading programmer group decides to do the same thing?
Or worse, what if IBM, Red hat and the other big linux makers does the same?
You will end with a bunch of corps, just like in the 80's...
BTW, open source is not a really new concept...
Berkeley Unix was open source since their first implementations, only that it got a strong patent holder differently than new software...
Now, you will surely flame over my post telling i'm a liar and an MS licker, but i analized the matter with my economy and business management university teachers and we reached that conclusion.

About programming, i'm ecletic...
Instead of forcinng into keeping a project exactly the same for all platform i would try to use the best features of every system and mantain compatibility only for vital components...

[mikhael]

Originally posted by Zarax
Or tries to improve the ones in their hands...

... which is exactly what open source software is all about: the ability of the user to improve the tool in their hands and not reserving that ability to a corporation.

What you fail to see in my opinion is that the open nature of linux can spell it's end as free software...

BTW, open source is not a really new concept...
Berkeley Unix was open source since their first implementations, only that it got a strong patent holder differently than new software...
Now, you will surely flame over my post telling i'm a liar and an MS licker, but i analized the matter with my economy and business management university teachers and we reached that conclusion.

Funny, BSD was a collection of patches to a commercial software (AT&T Unix) and became an entire distribution of a free OS on its own. Later, it was commercialised (BSDi) which didn't do so well. But FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and NetBSD are still going strong as utterly free software. Its entertaining that BSD--which predates Microsoft--is still here, still going strong, still getting better and supported more widely and on more platforms.

You might want to pick the daemons you use for your arguments a bit more carefully.

[aldo_14]

Microsoft is a monopoly.  Monopolies are bad.  Thus, monopolies become targets.   For the good of software, we need competition.

[mikhael]

I should listen to my own advice. Microsoft finally patched that 9mo old security problem I mentioned earlier.

http://www.microsoft.com/security/security_bulletins/20040202_windows.asp

You know, when thing like this happen in open source software, they're usually addressed in hours or days, and almost never does it take even a month, let alone nine. Witness the OpenSSH vulnerability that was found a little while back: it was fixed within an hour of being reported.

Oh, and for the record, those forums we all know and love? Guess what they're running.

[Zarax]

Mikhael, look where www.microsoftusernetwork is hosted and you will know my opinion...
Beside that, i believe that big software companies are the best mean for delivering and distribuing quality products, but there must be only one standard.
Otherwise the average joe won't know what programs to buy because he won't be sure they will run in his shiny new pc, just like into the eighties.
Unix derivatives may be a good choice for servers, but Windows is and will stand as the best choice for the average user.
Aldo, if you say a monopoly is bad you don't really know what an oligarchy (namely trust) can do.
Here in Europe we pay ridicolously high prices for fuel, and this due to the privatization of the previously state run distribution corps (not to mention about the insurance companies).
What they did was to make unofficial non competition agreement, so that they can set high prices but antitrust can't do anything because there are no real proofs about that and the companies are namely competitors.
You can always manage a near monopolistic situation, but you cannot do the same with a corporate trust.
And please don't tell me that open source is the magical panacea that will solve all these problems with software because it won't.
If you don't believe me, then you just need to walk out in a computer shop and look at how many versions of linux are there and their average price.
The main factor that made computers evolve from hobby to a serious profession was and is the economical potential.
If you don't have a cash cow then you cannot afford people working into the R&D, and as a result, very few people interested in advancing software development.
Actually the software R&D budget is around $20 billions globally, but if you look at who is spending that money you won't find really many names.
Without patent and selling benefits believe me, computers would have been little more than terminals.
Yes, you are right, we need competition, but for competition to exist you need something valuable to compete about.
Otherwise the only ones interested in real software development will be PC makers, and believe me the bundled software world is not something you would be happy with.

[kasperl]

so you say that there should only be one brand and make of car, because otherwise people wouldn't know what to buy?

anyhow, the fuel prices here are mainly due to government taxes, envirenment mainly, and trying to live up to kyoto.

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by Zarax

Aldo, if you say a monopoly is bad you don't really know what an oligarchy (namely trust) can do.

What has that got to do with the price of cheese?

Monoplies are bad because they give one company too much power.  It stifles the need to advance through competition, the need to improve for market edge.

although my main dislike of Ms is caused by it's immoral business practices...stuff like trying to create an Ms-only version of the Java VM (thus destroying it's multi-platform purpose) - which Sun successfully sued over, selling technology to the Chinese governemnt which is used for censorship, and soforth.

[Kazan]

Ingore Zarax - he's a microsoft brownnoser


Why they hell are you using red hat 9? get fedora core you out of date n00b! [/me is posting from FC1 on his dual boot laptop]

[Zarax]

AAh, Kazan, my dear brother in burning...
Wherever we cross the thread is sure to become a flame...

[Kazan]

That's why you should leave, and go back to that black hole you stick your nose up every day.. i believe it's called "Bill Gate's ass"

anyone who brags about being a member of the MUN is a technoweenie and a total halfwit when it comes to the computer world

[Zarax]

Oh, i'm sorry Kazan, god from which all the goodness comes from...

Come on people, let's join and build an altar to this guy's ego...

[Kazan]

why not, you already did that for Bill Gates