Posted on 07/30/2004 10:19:40 AM PDT by ShadowAce
Friday Tech Ping
Friday tech ping
Sorry, there's just no point in reading beyond this partisan poop.
My experience has been that the MS Office products have wonderful file compatibility features, including with a variety of non-MS products. And it's been a long time since I had any difficulty plugging in a new whatsis of any sort.
Yep - makes me wanna switch.
Agreed. XP is rock solid on my personal and business machines. Win v3.1, 95 and 98 were pretty shakey, in comparison. I won't be switching anytime soon, either.
BOING PING!
So you can do word processing and spreadsheets on Linux - modern computing needs go far beyond that, and "just about as good" isn't good enough. People have developed apps for everything you can imagine, running under Windows.
When a Linux variant comes along that can run native WinXP apps out of the box, at real speeds, then they'll have something. And even then, what'll they have? Something that runs Windows apps. I already have that.
What's unique about Linux that Windows can't do? I don't care if the OS is free - I'm not that much of a cheapskate. I've got work to do.
Agreed. As you know - all OS's have issues. None of which are insurmountable. It all depends on how much time you wish to spend dealing with those issues.
I've managed to crash my XP Pro system a few times. I believe the cheap-ass unstable hardware I have it running on is responsible for that. It does everything I need, most media will play in WMP, and IE is compatible with all those websites out there using ActiveX and other MS developments. It does the job for what I need it to do.
Now, I've dealt with Linux systems quite a bit at work. I've gotten tired of dealing with the myriad kernel versions and incompatible versions of various important libraries and modules (glibc being a big one). Now, admitedly, your average user isn't going to be loading Informix and Oracle database servers on a daily basis, but when these type of issues occur they can be very difficult to figure out. When I go to install something that says it will run on WinXP, it nearly always does, with no hassles.
MS Windows has its shortcomings, particular in the security area, but the various Linuxes (how many different flavours are there out there, currently?) aren't all this article makes them out to be, either.
For instance, I just attempted to upgrade Mozilla. I run the nightlies so I can bug hunt during my regular surfing so I went to the Mozilla nightly page and downloaded last night's build with the full installer.
Before I installed it, I renamed the existing mozilla installtion:
sudo mv /usr/local/mozilla /usr/local/mozilla.20040730
I untarred the installer and ran it.(as root) It installed itself into /usr/local/mozilla, which is the default. Then I attempted to run it. For whatever reason I got a segfault, which means the application crashed and burned. Not a good thing, as it is hard to surf if it won't run.
To recover from this failure, all I had to do was execute the following two commands...
sudo rm -rf /usr/local/mozilla
sudo mv /usr/local/mozilla.20040730 /usr/local/mozilla
Granted, with most windows installations, you'd have an icon to click to uninstall the program, but I know from experience that it is almost impossible to get most programs completely uninstalled without doing some registry and file hacking. However, in this case, I'd completely restored back to the previous (working) version with no trouble whatsoever, and can be confident there is nothing left hanging around that may cause problems for me in the future.
Frankly, IMO the biggest issue with MSWindows is the registry. Many years ago, the '.ini' files were bad enough, but they were replaced by microsoft with a nightmare that was much worse.
I tried the switch to Mandrake Linux OS 9.x, did a great job installing and worked like a charm. One Problem, did not support my printers at all. I have used Windows from 2.11 up. I agree with you, Windows, with all it's problems still gives me the most flexibility beyond the OS. I will ride it out with MS as well.
I do like the fact that a Flavored xNIX is trying to gain a foothold in the market, I am just not sure when they will be able to compete, even for free.
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By Ryan Naraine July 30, 2004 As promised, Microsoft has released a monster patch to secure its flagship Internet Explorer (IE) browser from takeover attacks. The software giant's out-of-cycle MS04-025 advisory included fixes for several "critical" bugs that have already lead to code execution attacks. That cumulative patch, which replaces the MS04-004 bulletin, provides a comprehensive fix to the core vulnerability that led to the Download.Ject malware attack last month. In that attack, malicious hackers exploited vulnerabilities in Microsoft's IIS 5.0 servers and IE to distribute malware programs. Software products fixed with the latest patch include Windows NT Workstation 4.0, Windows NT Server 4.0, Windows 98, Windows Millennium Edition (Me), Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows Server 2003. The cumulative patch covers IE versions 5.01, 5.5 and 6.0. According to the Microsoft alert, the flaws opened the door for attackers to install programs; view, change, or delete data; and create new accounts with full administrative privileges. |
I think by spoof the author means he's trying to make a funny. I don't believe it's meant to be a serious article.
Sounds superior all right, ROFLMAO.
I read no further than the line I quoted.
And I can do the same thing with Ghost. Some folks (on the Win side) haven't learned that, though. A lot of grief could be avoided by spending $30.00...
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