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Reasons why not to use M$...

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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.
--- End quote ---

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.

--- End quote ---


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.

--- End quote ---


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.
--- End quote ---


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.

--- End quote ---


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.

--- End quote ---


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.

--- End quote ---


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.

--- End quote ---


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.

--- End quote ---


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.

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