OFF: Virus alert (genuine)

[Paul Mather]

On Fri, 5 May 2000, Andrew Apold wrote:

=> Some things are self-fulfilling.  Create something that all the "morons"
=> can use, and guess what, the "morons" will mess it up.  If you had a
=> system that required some intelligence to operate, then those most likely
=> to screw it up wouldn't be using them.  Thus they are more reliable.

This just perpetuates the myth that Windoze is easy to admin.  It's not.
Why do you think they ship it pre-installed?  It's because the "morons"
(as you call them) can't install it and reliably get and maintain a
working system.

Most Windoze users I know who don't have some kind of background in
computing don't admin their own Windoze systems.  They get other people
to do that for them---usually me (unluckily)!  Then, when it's not
crashing, they say to me, "hey, why don't you use Windoze---it's really
usable," forgetting, of course, that they didn't have to put in the
grind to make it "usable" (between crashes, that is).  They fail to
recognise that just about any other OS would be just as "usable" under
the same circumstances (probably more so).

If Unix is "so hard," why is it that 5th graders at computer camp can
have no problems with it and X windows?  (Maybe because it was their
first exposure, and they hadn't been brainwashed into thinking it was
beyond them?)

Why is a pre-installed Unix system running FVWM95 (Windoze 95 desktop
lookalike) more difficult to use than a M$-Windoze system?  (Never mind
GNOME, KDE, Enlightenment, and other window managers...)

=> Give in.  I was an Amiga developer.  The stuff mac users have been saying
=> to themselves these last 4-5 years, we said them, too.  It doesn't matter.
=> Develop for the largest market.

Okay, I'll give in.  And whilst I'm at it, I'll stop supporting Hawkwind
and BOC and, instead, pay my money to tried-and-trusted market leaders
such as Britney Spears, N'Sync, and the Backstreet Boys (or whatever
their avatar is this week).  I'll forsake quality for mass appeal and
commercial success.  I will conform, dammit!

=> BTW, You'd be surprised to know how bad the power in some major metropolitan
=> areas can actually be.  If you have critical stuff, get a UPS and get
=> clean power.  It's probably not the spikes so much as the mild low
=> semi-brownouts that hurt the most often.

The perverse thing about this is that we don't have money in our budget
for useful stuff like UPSes and hard drives, but we can blow, e.g., $150
on a single-user copy of M$-Project, or $30/throw for multiple copies of
Norton Antivirus.  Sick.

=> >I have no objection to people using Micro$oft products, but, please,
=> >let's try and see it for what it is.  (And "pretty good" it ain't...:)
=>
=> Really, it depends on what you're talking about.  Their office apps are
=> top-notch, they have no equal, period, now or ever.  And if someone
=> offers micro-emacs as a worthy alternative...  sheez.  Corel is
=> retreating to Linux becasue they can't compete.

How soon they forget...  Here's an "ever:"  Back in the 80s, when
M$-Word was still around version 3 or 4, and ran in text mode only, I
was using Adobe Framemaker on a Sun 3 workstation under SunOS.
Probably about a decade later, when M$ released Word (for Windoze) 5 or
6, or 97 (or whatever flavour-of-the-month numbering scheme), did they
finally have a product that had the features supported by that old
Framemaker.  So be careful about the "now or ever" claim.  Framemaker
was doing all that stuff ages ago, and, for all I know, is probably
better nowadays (unless it's been domineered out of the market; I dunno,
I stopped using it long ago).

But that is the beauty and power of Micro$oft marketing: they are able
to promote the notion that they are "innovators."  It's reality creation
honed to a fine art.  Unfortunately, people either have short memories,
or don't know any better (or want to lie to themselves to cover up the
ugly lie).

I'll admit that M$-Office is Micro$oft's "killer app" (but very rapidly
going downhill to "bloatware syndrome" and "useless featuritis").
Maybe that's why they haven't ported it to Unix: why would anyone suffer
Windoze if you could run Office on a stable platform? ;-)

As for me, I tend to avoid M$-Office in favour of things better suited
to my needs.  I use LaTeX, because it handles what I need to do best
(academic papers with mathematical formulae and bibliographic
citations).  If I want to do *real* number crunching, I'll use either
Mathematica or SAS (and GNUPlot for graphs).  (I use gnumeric when I
need to do spreadsheets, but I don't remember the last time I did.)  I
don't use M$-Access because it is a toy (i prefer postgresql or mySQL);
and, heck, I just use LaTeX, or HTML, or PDF for presentations, but then
slick transitions is not my style.

I tried out StarOffice, and it seemed okay, but not enough to sway me.

Micro$oft may be wildly successful, but they definitely don't make
"pretty good products."

Cheers,

Paul.

PS: M$-Office lost my allegiance when they got rid of Power Pup (one of
the help agents in Office 97) in Office 2000!!!!! ;-)

e-mail: paul at gromit.dlib.vt.edu

"Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production
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