Vista Updates, BASTARDS!

[3v0]

There is nothing unique to microsoft that caused VISTA's problems. Had it been any other company the results would have been similar. We can hope that they learned from the experiance and that 7 will be much better from the get-go.

 

[Hero999]

You really should disable automatic updates you can install just the updates you want and not the ones that disable your keyboard.

Anti-virus is dangerous because it makes people feel more safe than they actually are. When a new virus is released you're completely unprotected until the AV software company get round to writing an update to detect and remove the virus. By the time an update is released 1000s of computers have been infected.

Memory resident anti-virus is also a bad thing because it slows your computer down and has compatibility issues with some software. I'd rather just not bother and re-install Windows every year or so. Using a restricted account for most tasks also provides some degree of protection but you have to accept some compatibility issues with old software.

 

[duffy]

Microsoft could use some serious competition. It's getting to be like some big commie scam where it's the Glorious People's Operating System that is designed by managers who are completely out of touch with what the users actually want, and they don't give a damn because they are the only game in town.

Vista reminds me of when Microsoft went from the .com model to the .net model for C++ and VB. Anybody else have to deal with that? Some advantages, yeah, but they changed a bunch of stuff for no apparent reason that made it more difficult to program (by changing every-friggin'-thing) and to port over old code.

Memory resident anti-virus is also a bad thing because it slows your computer down and has compatibility issues with some software. I'd rather just not bother and re-install Windows every year or so.

Agreed. There's a joke about how your computer runs faster with the viruses than it does with the anti-virus software. As painful as it is, you have to calculate time lost re-installing everything against time lost with all that memory resident crap that slows it down, causes hangups, and doesn't even do anything to stop new viruses.

 

[3v0]

Microsoft could use some serious competition.

What software developers need, more platforms to support.

 

[duffy]

No, it needs to run the existing programs designed to run on Windows or it's a non-starter.

 

[Hero999]

Microsoft could use some serious competition. It's getting to be like some big commie scam where it's the Glorious People's Operating System that is designed by managers who are completely out of touch with what the users actually want, and they don't give a damn because they are the only game in town.

I agree, and M$ have the cheek to call the Linux community communists!

I suppose it's true, communism isn't a bad idea, it's people that make it bad. Linux is what communism should be, M$ is like a communist state: pure capitalism one business (the government) owning everything with no competition allowed!

I think it would be better in the long run if MS were brought down.

 

[Torben]

I agree, and M$ have the cheek to call the Linux community communists!

I suppose it's true, communism isn't a bad idea, it's people that make it bad. Linux is what communism should be, M$ is like a communist state: pure capitalism one business (the government) owning everything with no competition allowed!

I think it would be better in the long run if MS were brought down.

Hear, hear.


Torben

 

[3v0]

No, it needs to run the existing programs designed to run on Windows or it's a non-starter.

You want windows but from another vendor. Why do you think it would be better?

Going from .com to .net was a waste of time. How much time will you waste when there are N players in the game?

Vista is not what M$ wanted to ship. It is what they had to ship.

I think they could do better but getting rid of them will only make it worse.

3v0 The devils advocate

 

[duffy]

You want windows but from another vendor. Why do you think it would be better?

Competition. Imagine if there was only ever one car company. We would still be driving 1950's lead-sleds.

 

[3v0]

Competition. Imagine if there was only ever one car company. We would still be driving 1950's lead-sleds.

Apples and Oranges. For the most part you buy a car and drive it. What would happen if you had to buy the frame, body, interior, electronics and etc, all from different vendors. Then added garbage you picked up in some junkyard.

Computers are more like that. Most of us need more then what M$ ships. How easy it would be to ship an OS if the user never loaded any code on it.

We had competition with workstations. Sun, HP, Apollo, SGI all others all made machines. Porting software between platforms was a pain even when written in C.

Worse you did not have vendor choice for all applicatons. Graphics programs tended to be on SGI machines because they were the in graphics platform. Other niches existed.

I am not saying all is well with the world.

 

[Torben]

French police: we saved millions of euros by adopting Ubuntu - Ars Technica

Most users aren't even aware that they can get OSS replacements for most of the common things they use on Windows, without having to pay the MS tax. Specialist software is a bit tougher, granted, although much of that can nowadays be dealt with using either wine or, in a pinch, a suitable VM (drawback of the VM solution is that it still requires a Microsoft license to run the OS legally).

Cross-platform issues aren't nearly as bad as they used to be either, so long as good programming practices are used and a decent cross-platform widget library is used.


Torben

 

[duffy]

What would happen if you had to buy the frame, body, interior, electronics and etc, all from different vendors.

Give me a better analogy, I believe it will still work. I compared it to the Soviets, the infamous "5-year plans". That's perhaps not so different that you would call apples and oranges on it. You want a shoe or you want to supply shoelaces or something, you can only deal with the Glorious People's Shoe Company For Progress And Diplomacy, which happens to be run by a bunch of dicks.

 

[3v0]

What I am saying is that a car is primarily a closed system.

An OS is not. Do not compare cars with OS's,

 

[Speakerguy]

I remember when copying a large number of MP3's over the college ethernet back in 99 that my Windows 98SE machine was nice enough to tell me I had -32,768 minutes remaining.

I switched to 2K soon after that.

 

[Hero999]

Competition. Imagine if there was only ever one car company. We would still be driving 1950's lead-sleds.

Give me a better analogy, I believe it will still work. I compared it to the Soviets, the infamous "5-year plans". That's perhaps not so different that you would call apples and oranges on it. You want a shoe or you want to supply shoelaces or something, you can only deal with the Glorious People's Shoe Company For Progress And Diplomacy, which happens to be run by a bunch of dicks.

Lol in the USSR there was only one manufactures of handbags so women all had exactly the same handbags, the same goes for shoes and everything else, there were also rations and huge queues in supermarkets just to get a loaf of bread.

There was plenty of innovation but only in fields such as submarines and nuclear weapons which was due to competition with the US governemnt.

I remember when copying a large number of MP3's over the college ethernet back in 99 that my Windows 98SE machine was nice enough to tell me I had -32,768 minutes remaining.

I switched to 2K soon after that.

I remember experiancing similar problems with DOS based operating systems which often used 16-bit numbers to store information.

 

[HiTech]

HARVEY
-- turn off auto update PERIOD! Always perform manual updates and even at that carefully select only what you deem as needed, despite what MS Update claims. Read the details of each update before d/l it. As for XP SP3 I didn't install that either... not a real necessity. Just remember that performing updates to pgms. isn't always a good thing. In fact there are a couple of websites that archive old versions of pgms. that a good many folks prefer to use versus the sucky updated ones.

OldVersion.com

**broken link removed**

Also be cautious of malware, etc. that labels itself as MS products such as that pesky MS Antispyware 2009.

For those of you that dislike Norton AV, their SEP-11.0 is outstanding despite it's size and resources. It works! It also provides the flexibility to disable specific features to save resources. Norton SEP-11 caught several bad files and malware that AVG, SpyBot, AdAware Pro, and Windows Defender all skipped over!!!

 

[bryan1]

HARVEY
For those of you that dislike Norton AV, their SEP-11.0 is outstanding despite it's size and resources. It works! It also provides the flexibility to disable specific features to save resources. Norton SEP-11 caught several bad files and malware that AVG, SpyBot, AdAware Pro, and Windows Defender all skipped over!!!

Well virus's are designed for windows and it will be a sure bet a fair few of them are thrown around by the virus companies in order to keep ya hooked and paying for software.

The good thing about any nix based OS virus's are non existant unless you let your version of wine or VM let winblows access the net.

 

[Mikebits]

Most viruses that infect my PC don't work because I still use win2k... I recently had the smitfraud-c virus on my pc but it did not cause pop-ups and such. Them virus writing bastages should be horse drawn and whipped, and then kicked, and then maybe kicked again. Once they get better, kick em sa more. Bastages...

 

[duffy]

I agree. Death penalty for virus writers.

 

[Mikebits]

I agree. Death penalty for virus writers.

Death penalty is too good for them. We can't kick em after they are dead. Keep em alive so we can kick em over and over I say... Bastages