Why Does Windows Still Suck? 1995
RatBastard writes "SF Gate's Mark Morford asks: Why Does Windows Still Suck? After wtaching his significant other's Windows PC drown in a sea of viruses and worms after only 4 minutes on her new DSL connection, Mark Morford wonders why the masses have not stormed Redmond waving torches and scythes in anger over the never-ending security flaws in Windows. Why haven't they jetisoned the foul beast from Redmond and migrated en mass to the Macintosh or even Linux?"
Why? (Score:5, Informative)
Microsoft needs to be banned from preinstalling (Score:5, Insightful)
Another reason though is that Linux still can be a hassle like downloading firefox and having to use administrator login to install.
Anyone remember the Windows Refund effort? (Score:5, Informative)
When you tried to do this, companies would say that you needed to contact Microsoft for the refund. Microsoft would say you needed to contact the computer seller. Once you finished running around in circles, you found out that it only cost the manufacturer about $1.00 to put the copy of Windows on that machine, and that's what you'd have refunded to you.
Of course, if you needed to get Windows back on the machine, now you'd have to pay the $180 for a full copy of it, because you had to return any and all materials from your computer purchase in order to get your dollar back.
Of course, if you managed to convince the manufacturer to sell you a computer without an operating system pre-installed, you had to pay an extra $10-$50 for that choice. Why? In order to be sure the computer worked in the first place, they had to install Windows to test the peripherals and other devices! Oh, did you want warranty support too? Sorry. "We don't support other operating systems."
The whole pre-installation thing was pure genius on the part of Microsoft's marketing department.
Re:Anyone remember the Windows Refund effort? (Score:5, Insightful)
Now there's the Knoppix Live CD (Score:5, Insightful)
In order to be sure the computer worked in the first place, they had to install Windows to test the peripherals and other devices!
That may have been an excuse in 1999, but Knot anymore [knopper.net].
Re:Microsoft needs to be banned from preinstalling (Score:4, Interesting)
Wrong ! (Score:5, Informative)
This article says otherwise. [theregister.com]
Some history. [theinquirer.net]
Re:Microsoft needs to be banned from preinstalling (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, they don't. Microsoft have repeatedly threatened & upped the price on vendors who sell machines without the OS pre-installed. And they have also charged for a Windows license for every machine sold, regardless of what OS was actually on it. This was the meat of one of the many lawsuits pending against MSFT when W. took office (and then they went away...)
Re:Microsoft needs to be banned from preinstalling (Score:4, Informative)
I've always been suspicious that those infamous "NSA_KEYS" had something to do with the settlement..... I could easily see MS proposing something like "drop this nonsense and we'll give you boys all the inside crypto keys you want, we'll keep Windows insecure and you can keep everyone owned.."
Check... You'll see, settlement talks during GW's tenure were even in NY as I recall!
They've been found guilty after all... No other convicted criminal is/has been allowed to keep their illegally gotten wealth after being convicted!... It's unprecidented, but TOTALLY slipped by in the hysteria after 9/11!..... There's a government connection here, they certainly wouldn't let me keep the money after robbing a bank!... It's unprecidented!
Re:Microsoft needs to be banned from preinstalling (Score:5, Informative)
From here [latimes.com]
Or this:
From here [com.com]
Ashcroft and James didn't have their positions in Clinton's administration.
Bad Moderators, go sit in the corner and think about what you've done.
Re:Microsoft needs to be banned from preinstalling (Score:5, Funny)
That is called a "Union". Popular for that very reason...
Re:Microsoft needs to be banned from preinstalling (Score:4, Insightful)
And I'm sure you're willing to apply the same standard to Novell, Mandrake, and Red Hat, right? God forbid a software company be allowed to pre-install an OS on a system that somebody else built!
By that standard, we'd have exactly three choices in computer hardware today - IBM, Sun or Apple. It's not very FOSS-ish of you to argue that less choice in both software and hardware would be good for anybody. Besides, if MS had to, you know they'd be able to outspend any of these guys on developing consumer hardware, so they'd still be a monopoly. You'd just have less Linux out there.
MS can be blamed for a lot of things, but really, this article is just a lot of pro-Mac, anti-MS hooey. Why it gets featured on Slashdot is not really a mystery given the site's post-OS X pro-Mac bias, but that doesn't make it really newsworthy either. I don't honestly even believe the guy's story about installing Windows on his SO's machine; the 4 minute attack is lifted straight out of an article that appeared here about 4-5 months ago. Seems a bit coincidental that a self-confessed lifetime Mac user would suddenly be installing Windows XP on his SO's machine just so he can write about how awful it is.
The second half of his article just goes on at length with the standard Mac fanboy arguments that we've heard for years - it stops being about security and instead touches on the prices of Macs vs. PC's (he argues PC's are actually more expensive once you bring them "up to the level" of a comparable Mac), the user-friendliness of Windows vs. OS X, the innovativeness of Apple vs. MS. I mean seriously, blah blah blah. If I wanted to read this, I'd just search the Usenet archives from 1986.
There's no doubt that Windows XP has its share of security problems, moreso than most OS's. But there's no new info in this article and lots of annoying fanboy hyperbole. I've seen more insightful writing in Slashdot posts, and that's saying something.
It's the servers (Score:5, Informative)
However, they have subtle differences with each set of machines that come off the production line. You can buy 4 servers at the same time and each will be a LITTLE different. Linux doesn't care. We use the same image with blades that we use with 345s that we use with 445s - no sweat.
BUT, with Windows, 2 blades (or whatever) require totally different drivers to be installed. My team can image (literally) tens (and probably 100-200, although we haven't tested that) of servers at once - using Linux in about a day. Windows - won't work, the requirements for the OS to have just the RIGHT driver for each server is a bloody NIGHTMARE.
Another issue is access. A lot of applications with Windows seem to need admin equivalent access and then want that ongoing to change anything. This means a lot of people need a LOT more access than we want to give out! With *nix, we've managed to use sudo and scripts to keep those boxes better locked down.
Otherwise, to be frank, I don't give a r@ts ass one way or the other. I simply line Linux b/c it works. If we could get past the image issue, I could probably live with Windows (and just suck it up WRT access).
Re:Why? (Score:4, Insightful)
Of the 33 people (just offhand) that I know that have home computers, only four are gamers. Four! 12% The fact of the matter is that my mom, dad, sister, brother-in-law (and his parents), and most people are NOT gamers. Slashdot geeks are gamers. Most are not.
Re:Why? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Why? (Score:4, Informative)
No kidding (Score:4, Interesting)
But the first time I saw XP was when a friend brought over his shiny new laptop. He wanted to go online, so we just plugged in an ethernet cable, and I went looking for the setting to turn on ethernet and DHCP, nothing more.
"Set up new internet connection" wizard, asks if i want to set up a home connection or office connection. I don't know, I want a fscking ETHERNET connection with DHCP, but I figure the idiots in Redmond assume all offices have ethernet and all homes have dialup, so I try "office". No joy. I try "home". No joy. Both give me the same options, and are asking whether I have ISDN. (why the... in 2003? ISDN?)
After fully half an hour, I finally realized that the "new internet connection" wizard only does dialup and ISDN, but that it still somehow thinks there's a difference between homes and offices that is relevant. Can't do ethernet through the wizard, and I can't find the control panels.
Of course the owner of the laptop knows bupkus about his shiny new system.
So I started hunting for other ways to configure the network.
I finally figured it out, but it took me an honest 90 MINUTES to figure out how to unhide the icons in the control panel so that I could actually connect the damn machine. Any other computer would have taken me 30 seconds, tops.
And don't even get me started about all of last year, when my girlfriend had an XP laptop that needed to have a different static IP, plus different wireless network name, at my house and at hers. My powerbook switches between full net configurations in two seconds, straight out of the apple menu, and I can store as many as I like. Every time she brought that laptop to my place, it was a five-minute hassle to hook the f*cker up and switch the IP/DNS/gateway by hand. Every time she went home, it was a ten minute tech support phone call to get it working again.
The incompetence of Microsoft's human interface engineers is completely unreal. Instead of fixing their poorly-organized control panels that were powerful but hard to use and cluttered with unnecessary details, they simply hid them entirely and replaced them with wizards that are completely unable to configure anything for anybody.
There are things I still can't manage with it
And setting up filesharing. I can't fileshare between my XP box and any other machine in the house. I have to fscking FTP files to and from my mac with it. My last LAN party: six geeks, six PCs - and we had to distribute level files on burned CDs because we couldn't get sharing to work on more than half the machines, even with all the configs set identically. The machines that couldn't connect to the server? Why
Since XP came out, the amount of time I spend supporting friends and relatives has absolutely quadrupled. The patheticness of its' configuration design and unpredictability of its networking code is jaw-droppingly, embarassingly, bad. I mean stinky.
Hang on, I'm starting to get the urge to tell you how I REALLY feel.
It's a Catch-22 (Score:5, Insightful)
The whole topic of games development using DirectX vs OpenGL has been discussed to death here. Sure, the game writers could do it in OpenGL instead of DirectX, but Microsoft has apparently made using DirectX extremely easy. Maybe what it will take is someone to write a translation library that will basically translate the DirectX calls into OpenGL calls. Once that's out there, more games can be done for non-Windows systems. While all that's going on, OpenGL must be made friendlier to use than DirectX.
OK, it's a lot... but if you really want to lure the games developers to the side of platform independence, you have to give them a good reason to do so.
Re:It's a Catch-22 (Score:4, Informative)
I think many of the popular emulators use it... don't know about "big" games though.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure, I could stop playing 95% of the games I like, install Linux, and then let my computer sit idle (I really don't use my home computer for anything other than playing games) while I wait for game developers to start producing games for my new OS of choice. But I'm not that altruistic. And neither is anyone else.
The fact of the matter is that Windows is currently by far the best platform for playing PC games, and, with a little bit of technical sense ("use a firewall"), it's "good enough" for pretty much everything else. There is currently no compelling reason for gamers to switch OSes, and as a result, no compelling reason for the bulk of publishers to release games for anything other than Windows.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
As a long time Mac user and developer, I'd have to agree. While the original article mentions that 97% of tasks can be performed by Macs just fine, it's that confounded 3% that Microsoft has been able to exploit in the marketplace. Games, enterprise business apps, and obscure in-house projects have pretty much sustained the Windows platform up to this point. Creatives, home users, and students (the Mac's historical user base) have not had the financial or political clout to compete with the technological preferences many IT organizations have.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Why does Linux still suck?"
Talk about presumptuous.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Interesting)
I've been using Linux since '92 or so. It does a lot of neat things. I used it as my desktop for years.
Two years ago I got a new laptop and then a new job at a company that does a lot of Microsoft Exchange related work. So, I tried XP out, because I hadn't really tried a MS product in a long time. Guess what? XP is pretty fucking good. Sorry, it is.
Oh yeah. Exchange is pretty fucking good, too. So is Active Directory.
Deal with it.
robert
eDirectory! (Score:5, Informative)
In fact I stopped hating Microsoft (for a while) after my first 10 installs of 2000 Server and Active Directory. I fell for the hype, which was mostly true, until I used Novell Netware 6.0 with eDirectory.
eDirectory is the same, plus better [novell.com] and it runs on Linux, Windows and pretty much any place you want to install it. The licensing is a lot more straight-forward, it's better than Active Directory [novell.com], runs on Linux and it's Novell. We love Novell now don't we [suse.com]?
I say the question is:
Re:Why? (Score:5, Interesting)
He bought a name brand laptop. These are not clean installs of Windows, these are all imaged at the factory with a master image. I work on a helpdesk, and had a user call in recently with a brand new, out of the box HP.
It had spyware on it. No joke. It had IE hosed to the point we could not use it to configure a router to get online.
All I can guess is that thier master image has the spyware. I connot conceive of them WANTING it there.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
You've listed only 4 games. What if he wants to play one of the 40,000 other games available for Windows? It's a lot less hassle to run them on the OS they were designed for than to mess around with emulators or wine.
Secondly, why should anyone need an excuse for selecting a particular operating system? It's a matter of choice, and the parent clearly explained his reasons for preferring Windows. Linux appears to suit your particular needs better, and that's great too.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
As I said in another post, if you're primarily a gamer, chances are that Windows is "good enough" for any non-gaming application you want to use. If you've got a firewall installed and don't use IE, chances are good you've never run into anything like the author of the article describes. At which point, there's really no appeal to the bother of rebooting every time you want to switch between game and non-game applications.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Funny)
I play games and use linux exclusively. I have an xbox.
(for the smart arses that are going to point out the xbox runs a custom win2k kernel, i know, that doesn't count)
That doesn't make any sense, you can't just arbitrarily decide what does and doesn't count
I have lots of sex and with women exclusively. I also have sex with other straight guys.
(for the smart arses that are going to point out that having sex with another guy is gay, i know, that doesn't count)
I have a lot of fun and don't do drugs. I like crack cocaine
(for the smart arses that are going to point out that crack is modified cocaine, i know, that doesn't count)
I'm good at solving problems and never use violence against any person to do so. I smack my wife around.
(for the smart arses that are going to point out that women are people too, i know, that doesn't count)
Common sense, for the love of Pete... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Common sense, for the love of Pete... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Common sense, for the love of Pete... (Score:5, Funny)
Hey now!!!!
Re:Common sense, for the love of Pete... (Score:5, Insightful)
Why would you let your SO attach an unpatched and unprotected PC to the Internet?
To download security patches from Microsoft? There is a real chicken and egg situation here; you need to go online to patch your machine, but as soon as you are online you are hit by worms.
Re:Common sense, for the love of Pete... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Common sense, for the love of Pete... (Score:5, Insightful)
There's no chicken and egg about it as the other poster seemed to think. Whatever OS you're running, make sure you're behind one of these routers - there's a huge choice and they're fairly cheap these days (less than the cost of 1 month on DSL for a lot of people).
Re:Common sense, for the love of Pete... (Score:4, Insightful)
You know, there didn't used to be a big "firewall-everything" mentality on the net... it's a shame that inferior products have convinced people that they need extra layers of frivilous security just to do what the OS ought to do on it's own.
Re:Common sense, for the love of Pete... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, fault vs. personal responsibility. It's MS fault that the OS is crappy. But if you take personal responsibility the problem goes away. The same can be said for so many things in life.
Re:Common sense, for the love of Pete... (Score:5, Insightful)
Red herring. What portion of the 91% of computer users infected with spyware were infected by an inbound attack? I'll give you a hint. It's probably smaller than the number of Linux workstations in use currently as personal computers. The vast majority of infected users got that way as a direct result of the hideous security flaw that is IE. All they had to do was visit the wrong web site. Windows firewall can do NOTHING to stop that.
Re:Common sense, for the love of Pete... (Score:5, Insightful)
Having a firewall would have most definitely stopped those infections. Granted, most crap beyond self-infecting worms are caused by the user, but don't say such a small amount of users won't get infected by not having a firewall.
Re:Common sense, for the love of Pete... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Common sense, for the love of Pete... (Score:4, Funny)
You've obviously not seen what's at the bottom of the guy's archive of previous columns [sfgate.com] page...
Probably did not realize until it was too late (Score:5, Funny)
Slow motion... the guy throwing himself across the room as the hand with the RJ45 inexorably moves into place faster than he can arrive.
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!
ALl you need to make it a great scene in a movie is for the laptop to shake, slide off the table, then explode in a huge fireball when it impacts the carpet as the guy knocks her out of the way.
Re:Common sense, for the love of Pete... (Score:4, Insightful)
your right... its his fault because he is not savvy...
and its the woman in the haltertop fault because she was asking for it...
Simple (Score:5, Insightful)
Also... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Simple (Score:5, Insightful)
This might come as a surprise to the /. community, but many users don't understand the concept of an "operating system". Many users don't know the difference between Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office. Many users don't even understand that things go on "behind the scenes", and so they think that the difference between Linux, Windows, and OSX are just GUI changes and different programs.
Microsoft Word Perfect (Score:5, Funny)
"I have microsoft explorer xp, but don't think it's microsoft word. It's call word perfect."
Re:Simple (Score:5, Interesting)
They might know that you can't, but they'll probably just tell you, "It's because they're different kinds of computers" without any idea of what they mean by "different kinds". Now put your Ubuntu LiveCD on both the Mac and the Dell, and watch the confusion play out. Now, why is it that they can run the same programs?
If you're not pretty well versed in these things, it's confusing. Mention the words "memory management" or "virtual memory" or "kernel" or "process". Ask people, does your computer have these things? They don't know.
Let me give a thought experiment: Take four identical Macintoshes, one with Gentoo and KDE, one with Gentoo and Gnome, one with Darwin and Gnome, and one running OSX. Let them sit at each computer for a while, running what applications they can. Now, imagine explaining to them which computers of the four are running the same operating system, and what the difference is.
Are you imagining a glazed-over look peppered with looks of confusion and annnoyance? That's because most users, all they know is the GUI interaction. They know that they click on the "Internet Explorer" icon, type in a web address, and it shows a web site. So do they know the advantages one OS has over another? No, because they don't know that the two machines work any differently underneath the GUI, because they don't necessarily understand that there *is* an "underneath the GUI". All they know, if they know anything, is that the icons are in different places.
Re:Simple (Score:4, Interesting)
that is funny..
My wife has me use my linux box to download pictures off her camera because the windows programs to do it are so unstable and buggy (and it is fuji digital camera)..
Easy for me.. plug it in and mount it.. takes about 5 seconds total..
yea.. a "hack" that took me 10 minutes tops to set up once and it has ran since we have had the camera.
Whereas my wife has re-installed her windows computer I don't know how many times and had to set up the camera equal number of times until she asked me to do that.. since, no problems.. She is shopping for a Mac right now..
Only thing I use windows for is some games.. and I refuse to install "anything" other than a game on it and only use firefox.
It is behind a tight firewall, has no open shares so I don't even windows-update it as even those cause problems.
My linux boxes are fine.. No problems ever..
One day you will get over your fear and see there are actual real alternatives.. Unless you like dealing with that crap?
Re:Simple (Score:4, Insightful)
See a problem here? Your wife has YOU download the pics off her camera. If Linux is so easy and intuitive, why does she not do it herself?
Oh, and working a camera with the Mac is a dream come true! 10 minutes to set up? Bah! Plugged in the camera (none of this loading drivers and setup nonsense) and everything JUST WORKED.
Why Does Windows Still Suck? (Score:4, Funny)
Longhorn is the answer (Score:5, Interesting)
Longhorn will be the first release of Windows authored completely after Microsoft began their Trusted Computing Initiative and released .NET. Longhorn will reimplement and convert major Windows subsystems to managed code. This alone will substantially improve security of the operating system, as while the APIs will remain the same legacy Win32 apps will end up talking to managed code beneath the Win32 API (yes, .NET makes this possible)
This will dramatically lessen the exploitation potential of code flaws in the Windows application libraries. Microsoft has to maintain support for legacy application, but that doesn't mean they can't get a fresh start on the underlying code, and doesn't mean that existing Microsoft applications can't be converted to managed code as well.
Typical Microsoft Answer To Problem: More Software (Score:5, Insightful)
The answer has been staring at us for 20 years now. Many of the security problems in Windows are born of legacy. And ironically they were problems born from not learning lessons learned by other Operating Systems.
But in typical fashion, Microsoft is throwing more software at the flaws instead of fixing the fundemental design which created the issue in the first place. The whole chain about any virus using IE as an vector should show you this.
There are fundemental issues that were learned by other systems along time ago that MS continues to ignore and throw more software upon in an attempt to obscure the problems. So many things would go away if users never had the previliage to screw up their system easily. So many things would go away if the web browser was treated as a viewer instead of a platform for execution. So many tools could be simplified and made less confusing if they fixed the underlying problems...but they won't.
I'm sorry to sound like flamebait but I'm sick of it. Longhorn will get released and people will harass me on what in the world "code group permissions" are. People can't figure out IE's "zones" and they want me to explain to users how "code groups" work?! Thanks Microsoft...thanks for completely avoiding the problem.
Boring (Score:4, Informative)
This really starts to get boring. I have already written about it countless times only to get completely ignored every time I dare to point out that the emperor is naked.
I find it truly amusing that people who say that there are other advantages than only Digital Restrictions Management of using "trusted" computing [gnu.org] and Palladium-like platforms usually talk with great enthusiasm and excitement about the new and innovative security features [cap-lore.com] that have already been implemented in the 1970s [cap-lore.com] for crying out loud, only better and with no strings attached [cam.ac.uk]. All TCPA zealots are usually completely ignorant of the existance of such operating systems as KeyKOS [upenn.edu] or EROS [eros-os.org] with formal proofs of correctness [psu.edu] for God's sake and without all of the silliness of "trusted" computing.
And no, this is not only my opinion [eff.org] that we don't need DRM to get security. I am not the only one who says that everything that TCPA can possibly do to security can also be done in software, with the only exception of DRM, and in fact it has already been done, decades ago. I am not really surprised at all why it is completely ignored by the TCPA and TCI pushing industry. I am only outraged that there are so many naïve people who once again will gladly do anything no matter how dumb it is, if only their good uncle Bill Gates says that it's good for them.
Please, people, if you want to learn about real systems security, then read some old papers by Jerome Saltzer, Michael Schroeder, Norman Hardy and Jonathan Shapiro. If you want to learn about cryptography, read texts by Bruce Schneier. Microsoft is not a reliable source of knowledge in that field.
People always ask me where are the real innovations in systems security and I always say them that they are in the seventies, and have been being ingnored since then by major software vendors because people don't demand using them. This story and this thread is a great example: "Yeah, this version of Windows may suck, but still I am looking forward to buy the next one."
Wait, I've already heard it... In 1995, 1998, 2000, 2003... Oh, you mean that this time they really mean it?
No problem with Windows (Score:5, Funny)
why? (Score:3, Insightful)
Why? Because Microsoft focuses its resources on market share rather than making a robust and stable system. Once consumers are locked in they tend to stick with what they know and buy the upgrades. It's that inertia that MS banks on when they release repackaged corn-laden turd and call it "Windows NextGen-2010+++ with Lemon Scent" Seriously: what real ideas have they come up with in the past many years? Everything they make is a bit shinier and fatter than the previous versions but where is the innovation?
It's the way people are (Score:3, Insightful)
easy (Score:5, Insightful)
Sounds like too easy of an answer, but for non-tech savvy people, a computer is just a tool for email, web, etc. If computers were a vital part of people's lives, they might care. Corporations can pay administrators to keep their computers clean, but joe twelvepack doesn't use his computer for anything that he can't do without. QED.
Why? Because they have been taught. (Score:5, Insightful)
Seems dubious (Score:5, Interesting)
He links to the Crack a Mac [tidbits.com] challenge, as evidence that macs are bulletproof. Fine, but read their story- most of the attempts to crack *that* mac were based on old UNIX and NT attacks, and well, duh! HOWEVER- nobody (hardly) uses macs for webserves. If we had been doing that for the past 15 years, well, perhaps there'd be heaps of *known* exploits. The Crack a Mac story doesn't prove that there aren't exploits, it proves that not many folks know what they are.
Re:Seems dubious (Score:5, Interesting)
SBC Yahoo! Doesn't Help... (Score:3, Insightful)
I recently got DSL through my phone provider (SBC) and am torn on if I like it or not. The CD they send with it has spyware, its own browser, and all sorts of nasty things that WILL bring your system to a crawl easily. Sure Windows doesn't do very well, but a provider's CD like SBC Yahoo's does not help at all.
Hooking it into my Linux box with rp-pppoe was nice though - and the speed is impressive.
Because they're afraid (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, let's reiterate the obvious (Score:5, Insightful)
Second, the average user could no more tell you the difference from an OS and an application than from a Trojan versus a Virus.
Finally, the average user isn't all that clued that there are any other options out there, and there are few if any application or game ads on TV that say "Runs on Mac" or "Runs on Linux" to make them even look.
---
More rants like this on my blog [blogspot.com]
Reluctance to change (Score:5, Interesting)
Perhaps this is just human nature. But as a "switcher" who is approaching his one year anniversary with a PowerMac after almost 20 years of Windows and DOS (starting with DOS 2.0!) I can honestly say: Windows users, it's not your fault. Microsoft should be ashamed, not you. Windows sucks, and there are better choices out there for you. Make them! You'll be happy that you did.
Re:Reluctance to change (Score:5, Insightful)
I have turned three people to the osx generation macs so far; each of them took over six months to decide to switch, all of them have more than enough cash to buy whatever computer they want.
The problem was in each case...
They were thick.
They simply could not understand simple phrases like, "all of your computer problems will be over once you buy a mac"..."you will never have to worry about viruses and worms again after you buy your mac"..."your work will never be lost again due to a crash if you buy a mac" etc etc.
Finally, each one switched, and they now scream the praises of macintosh to anyone within hearing range.
The problem with people (ordinary users) using windows is that they have little or no imagination; they cannot imagine another OS, and most of them dont even know what an os is. Most of them think a computer IS windows sitting on a 'TV' screen. These are the same sorts of people who, despite being told the contrary, persist in believin that Iraq had something to do with 911, or that they had WMD. There is no reaching these people, and never will be. They are inured to windows, to stupidity, to suffering. They think that is what using a computer is about; poor connectivity, no usability, crashes, worms and virri, and after all is said and done, why not? That has been their universal experience of computers for years.
And for the ones that wanted to try Mac, it was always a non starter because of the price. Now perhaps, we might see a change and an uptake of Macs with the new reasonably priced model, but honestly, I fear the white box is too small to impress the bumpkins.
Because people are lazy (Score:4, Insightful)
-Benjamin Meyer
So, why *DOES* windows still suck? (Score:3, Insightful)
In Slashdot terms, that article was Interesting, but not Informative, and certainly not Insightful. It basically boils down to two things:
What it does not provide, though, unfortunately, is an attempt to explain why that actually is the case. The author goes on to dismiss every attempt that has been made to explain just why Windows is still so dominant (like "Macs are too expensive") - or, for that matter, why Windows is (still!) so inherently insecure (like "Macs have no viri because they are not an attractive target") -, but he doesn't even attempt to offer other reasons for these things. Rather, he just says "these are what I claim to be the facts, they're contradictive, but I'm not gonna explain it".
Considering the article's title ("Why Does Windows Still Suck?") promises an explanation, that's rather unfortunate, and I'm afraid I have to conclude it's just praise for the Mac with little to no informational value, and minor goof-ups like confusing PCs with "PCs that run Windows" just make it even more clear that this is not an objective comparison or explanation attempt.
Economics (Score:4, Insightful)
And if the computer "breaks" or slows down it's not that expensive to go buy a new one. It's just a part of our American "throw-away" consumerism. Apple computer users are like the Jaguar and Mercedes crowd - they're pretty damn expensive cars, but they'll last for a long time and look great on the road no matter how old they are. Linux computer users trying to use Linux on the desktop are like the "ricers." The car doesn't always work, is usually a "work in progress," but when done right can demolish any comparably priced car. They're still not as classy or long-lasting as the Mercedes and Jaguars, but every once in a while they're pretty cool.
'Cept Linux users don't get hot booth babes at the trade shows.
You know why? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's the same reason why people don't storm the RIAA headquarters...
It's the same reason why people don't storm the *insert whatever you like*...
Sure, Slashdotters might get angry and send off snail mail/email/faxes to whoever they're angry at. But we're a minority.
The MAJORITY are just too complacent with their lives. They're happy within their immediate environment. They may think it's not right, but they'll never take the action against it. It's too much of a hassle.
So instead they just acceot it. Windows crashing is obviously not so much of an inconvenience that they must storm Redmond. It's easier to push the reset button.
One reason for that is time spent .. (Score:4, Insightful)
Windows crashing is obviously not so much of an inconvenience that they must storm Redmond. It's easier to push the reset button.
I used to wonder why things that annoyed me a lot about Windows, and the fact that it's crap, didn't seem to bother other people so much. Then I realised that, apart from the usual valid explanation that most have had their expectations lowered so much regarding computers that they're almost impossible to disappoint, only a small percentage of other users I know spend as much time on a computer as I do. Most people just spend maybe a few hours a day on a computer, e.g. do some simple tasks like e-mail and web, maybe a Word document or spreadsheet. So if something annoys them, it's for a short time and then they go about doing other things. But as a software developer, I basically spend nearly all my time behind the computer - a 40 hour week is rare relaxation, 60 hour week not uncommon. So when some little Windows bug annoys you, it annoys you 10 hours a day, 6 or 7 days a week, for months and sometimes years. I think this inherently puts a different perspective on it. It's one thing being annoyed for an hour or two then going back to what you enjoy and do all day. It's another if what you enjoy and do all day has become annoying all day due to the system you're using being crappy. Because you also 'explore' the system deeper, you also uncover far more bugs and annoyances. It's like, if I drive to work in a junky car, that sucks but only for 20 minutes a day. But if my job involves driving all day, then having a decent ride is going to make a world of difference.
'Cause we are all sheep..... (Score:3, Insightful)
Lot of Reasons (Score:5, Insightful)
Things like consistency, convenience, perceived value, brand recognition, etc., all play a big role.
Same thing with Solaris boxes... (Score:5, Funny)
Caleb
WINDOWS DOESN'T SUCK! (Score:5, Funny)
The WIMP Metaphor is Flawed. (Score:3, Interesting)
The operating systems that don't suck understand this: Basically, most Linux apps are just front ends for command-line utilities that do the real work- If they aren't command-line based they still have very independent abstract non-GUI modules that handle the actual labor (such as the gecko rendering engine for mozilla.)
OSX also is beginning to view the GUI as just a fantastic front end to a UNIX infrastructure.
The sucky OSes are the ones that don't distinguish between the GUI and the real programs- MS Windowses and Apple OS9 were like that and these are/were both pretty ugly to work under, in my opinion.
YOU GUYS ALWAYS MISS THE OBVIOUS... (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't Blame MS - blame the PC makers (Score:5, Interesting)
Who's fault is this? Is it Microsofts? Not really, at least how I see it.
I blame the computer manufacturer that you bought the box from.
Those holes that are in your windows box when you plug it into the net already have patches written for them.
It's the manufacturers that refuse to slipstream these packages into the software builds that they stick on their machines coming out of the factory.
Dell builds your PC to order, as do a few other guys.
The hard drive has an OS imaged onto the drive on the line.
And since there is a common image for each machine of the same family, it's a very simple process for Dell to image their machines on the line.
Each model has it's own OS image, based on hardware.
It would take very little effort to slipstream an updated patch into those images. No PC has to sit in an open box waiting to be patched; they are patched when they're built. That is not a difficult solution, it would take the hiring of one or two guys in the factory to add a slipstream into the disk image (and slipstreaming is *very* easy, as long as you know the process.)
It would be easy as pie. Your machine would come off the line patched, and current. It would only be out of date by a few days, the time it would take to ship the box to you from the factory. The likelihood of a new exploit that would pwn you in that time is very, very low.
Same thing with going to a retailer. They should be provided current and up to date boxes when they leave the store. It would not be difficult for BestBuy/CircuitCity/et al to stick the box/laptop you buy inside their secured network, and patch the machine before you walk out the door with it.
Let's use an analogy that the author of the article used; a new car.
You buy a new Ford. Before you bought it, Ford issued a recall, due to a defective gas tank that may or may not explode. When you buy the car off the lot, it may have sat there a few months (parallel = older unpatched windows build). You take it home to find out that the recall was not applied to the vehicle; why not? Because the dealer says it's your responsibility to get it in to get fixed; not the dealers.
Would that be acceptable? No. Not for a moment. The same thing is happening with Windows, and you can't blame MS for it. It's the PC makers that sell you an exploitable box.
Classic slashdot technical discussions (Score:5, Funny)
-Why does Windows still blow?
-Why does my Tux tattoo still itch?
-Why can't I still get a date?
Cracks in the wall.... (Score:4, Informative)
I'd just submitted the same item, but with some additional background...
Moreford isn't the only person noting crap quality of Microsoft. The New York Times saw fit to run 2300 words on erasing a hard drive and reinstalling the OS [nytimes.com], to terminate spyware with extreme prejudice. I mean, when was nuking your C:\ drive national news? A few months earlier, I was interviewed for an expose of the adware/spyware industry in Barbiarians at the Digital Gates [nytimes.com]. My own technical followup, Spyware, Adware, Windows, GNU/Linux, and Software Culture [netcom.com] has garnered a number of responses, most variations of "why do people put up with this cr*p?!"
Even the local small-town paper's usually Microsoft partisan columnist is suggesting it's time for the Microsoft Empire to begin to crumble [napanews.com]. And he's not the only one.
The point is that these aren't geeks and gearheads talking out, it's the current in the popular press. Ordinary people. Which wouldn't be so significant if there weren't clearly identifiable, far better alternatives. Linux. Mac OS X. ABMS - Anything but Microsoft.
I think we're finally seeing the ediface crumble.
Observations of the masses (Score:4, Interesting)
There's also the public image issue. Everyone knows about Windows. Mac still has a stigma of being prone to crashing and annoying users with all those old "Are you rally sure you were really sure you wanted to click that yes you truely indeed did want do do that?" dialog boxes. You and I know those issues are no longer things to worry about, at least they're far smaller bothers than they once were, but the mass public doesn't know that, and they aren't willing to even have a look to find out, much like so many slashdotters here are unwilling to fairly evaluate AmigaOS4 last week or so what that article came up. The mass public echoes your "Amiga is dead!" chants only they point it at Mac instead, or point chants about "What can *I* possibly use Linux for?!" at the Linux crowd.
Linux has other public image issues to work though. Things like "It's hard to install or use" have been addressed reasonably well, but the public again isn't willing to discover that to be true. Linux also has the old reputation of having no applications or games or stuff normal people would use. I know many people that cannot fathom what in the world I could possibly use Linux or AmigaOS for, yet are unwilling to be shown all the everyday applications like OpenOffice, Mozilla, Doom3, Unral Tournament, etc. that exist for Linux or AmigaOS equivalents for many things, and insist on continuing in their incorrect belief that such apps and games do not and CAN NOT exist outside of Windows. Even though the Mac crashes chants are obsolete and Windows has the same reputation, the masses are not willing to bother with reasoning.
The fact that MS pretty much looks like it IS the somputer software industry also has a great hold on users. There are lots who simply believe that since they are so big, they must have the best product. Even with the obvious bugs and other problems they experience, many people believe that since everyone else is such a small marketshare that they must of course have even worse quality products than the market winner has. For example, I can not get my dad to use anything but MS products because of this. He uses MSIE and Outlook, and there's no changing that, no matter how many viruses or spybots or zombies his computer is infected with. The friend I mentioned above is unwilling to use anything but MSIE because he doesn't care to learn anything else, as trivial as that learning curve may be, he's simply not interested even after all of his own complaining about MSIE.
It's not a "problem" with a rational solution, I don't think it'sbecause people are "stupid" or anything like that, I think it's because the vast majority of people simply do not care enough to actually do anything about it. Having what they're used to or what 97% of the world uses is more important to them than having a higher quality product.
Why would this even be posted on /.? (Score:5, Insightful)
So I was reading /. when I came across a typical 'OMG Windows SuXors' article..
I casually sipped my afternoon coffee, set it down, and clicked the article link, bracing myself for the deluge of mind-numbing numbers and references to obscure studies.
After reading the article, I looked to the right side-bar for a list of other recent articles by the author. Trying to get a feel for the authors views, I decided to peruse a few of them.
Well, I must say. Mark Morford has to be one of the most rabid, extremist, over-reactive, leftist, tin-foil hat wearing, Moore wannabe's I've had the displeasure of reading.
Now, before the flames begin to rise, please understand the last paragraph was a simple reciprocle example of Mr. Morford's diatribes. Basically take a simple statement, and make it appear so sensationistically over-the-top.
So now to my point. How can this article be used on a news site, when it is simply nothing more than a rant? I use Linux and Windows, and on occasion Macs. I rarely have any problems with any of my systems. I have never had my Windows boxed filled with virii/trojans, nor have I had a crash in as long as I can remember. Am I just one of the lucky ones, or do I simply ignore the little monkey moving back and forth in a feeble attempt to evade my mouse click for a Free iPod
Was this written just for Slashdot? (Score:5, Insightful)
Windows 98? Sucked. No arguments from anyone about that. Windows ME? Sucked. Again, little defense even from MS. Windows 2000? Not as sucky--marked improvement in stability. Windows XP? Much better. Not perfect, but glad to see it's better.
If you're going to run Windows the simple fact of life you're going to have to get used to is this: high maintenance. Well, maybe it's not all that bad...
- Patch and then patch again.
- Before you even think about plugging into the network, patch it from CDs after you re-install the OS (don't trust what comes from the factory)
- install your anti-virus and your adware prophylactics before you think about going on-line, too.
- Install Firefox and turn off that damned built-in firewall on XP2 after you install a 3rd party firewall package like ZoneAlarm.
- Don't log-in as Administrator ever and make sure you're using a 15 character password with a few unicode characters in it for all accounts.
- Install a firewall router on your LAN and work from behind it.
- Don't use the same password on any other computer.
- Update your virus DAT files daily--maybe twice a day
- Run RKDetector everynow and then just to make sure.
- Boot from a Knoppix CD once in a while to make sure you're not owned.
- If you enabled any kind of services, turn them off.
If you're running linux, you'll need to practice the same kind of vigilance. Those boxes are 0wn3d more often by "real" people instead of zombie processor or worms. In fact, crackers like Linux boxes much more than Windows because they're more fun and harder to 0wn.Macs are easily knocked over two if you're running services like SSH. A dictionary attack is trivial.
They all still suck
Just avoid the pillars of the monoculture. (Score:4, Interesting)
But windows is not that bad, not the best, but not as bad as the article paints it.
While the article attempts to make light of it, the fact remains that being the dominant player attracts the most Malware, Virii, spyware etc...
But you can avoid problems by staying away from the pillars of the monoculture:
Use Firefox instead of IE,
Use Thunderbird instead of Outlook,
Use Open Office instead of MS office,
Use Media Player Classic instead of MS WMP 10.0.
Use some other chat instead of MSN (I use Miranda and Yahoo).
90% of your problems are now gone. Everything is free. You are now mostly divorced from the monoculture. There is one last piece of the puzzle:
Personal Firewal. I use Sygate Personal.
You are now at 95%.
That last 5% relies on being careful. At this point the crap you get will most likely be installed by yourself.
That is why I always look for opens source programs first. To me nothing says secure and safe like open source.
When I get beyond open source, google is my last line of defence:
Do a google on "divx spyware" and this...
Do all of the above and you should be pretty safe. I surf lots, Download all kinds of programs/ media etc and my system is clean whenever I check it.
A couple of years ago I did nothing till I got a few viruses, then I wised up. Clean sailing since then.
Why the hatred and the defensiveness???? (Score:5, Insightful)
Premise 1: We have a computer user, who is a journalist, has been using Macs for nigh on 15 years, is not extremely tech savy (Get to that in a mo') and sees that his fellow computers users, most of them on one of the millions of brands of PC and one of the various flavours of Windows, be it from Win98 to WinXP, have, in general, more problems with their computers than he does.
What does all that tell me?
I am a Mac user myself (well, I use a PC as well with Linux and Win2000 on it and I used to be a Windows shop sys admin). I agree with his OBSERVATIONS 100%. I mean observations because apart from his subjective ranting on why the world doesn't string BillG up from the rafters, which is his OPINION, his article has a good point.
I have seen and expereienced the same problems with Windows machines, until learning better, such as the 20 seconds till being hacked when first going online with WinXP and the numerous bugs in the OS over the years. Yes, I know as well as you that putting a simple router in front of the machine stops 90% of the bugs and being careful about mails and what you download and keeping up with pacthces will stop the rest, but it is a real pain and, in my experience, one has to ask the simple question: why?
In that I agree with the article. Using Windows is more complex than a Mac with OSX. Now on to the tech savy bit. The author writes about the prize that was offered for hacking the webserver Webstar, which was the only real webserver on classic Mac OS. It was never used widely in the server world and thus is not a good example of application security. The guy reveals his lack of expertise because, all those who know that OSX is based on BSD know that the webserver shipped with OSX is Apache, the same one that upsets the numbers game of OSS with respect to commercial offerings when compared to IIS.
Also, the argument that Windows has more software available is a real one, especially for gamers and for CAD and specialised business applications and the situation will stay that way while Windows has such a dominating marketshare.
And that is a reason for staying with Windows, but it isn't the reason why 90% of the world's computer using public uses PC's and Windows. That reason is simply because PC's are more available and most people have no idea that there are alternatives and are only interested in getting a "computer" with which they can chat, browse, mail, write letters, store photos, listen to music etc. Although a Mac arguably, in my experience, does all of this much better than Windows does, most people will simply go to the nearest shop and use what is there.
Ahmen.
A story (Score:5, Informative)
Day 1: Couldn't partition my hard drive because the Slackware installation disk doesn't have drivers for SATA disk controllers. Spent the rest of the day searching the web for work-arounds.
Day 2: Located a message board where someone had posted a custom ISO image of Slackware disk 1 with a SATA-enabled kernel. Was able to partition my hard drive and get setup running, but when it came time to pick a kernel to install, it refused to let me insert disk 1 to grab the SATA kernel. Spent the rest of the day searching the web for work-arounds.
Day 3: Finally figured out that I could put the setup process in the background, unmount the CD, eject and re-insert disk 1, then bring setup back to the foreground. Completed setup and got X running. Copied over source for 2.6.10 kernel, which I had burned to a CD. Started doing configuration, and realized there were no Linux drivers available for my wireless network card. Spent the rest of the day searching the web for solutions.
Day 4: Discovered ndiswrapper, a module that allows you to use standard Windows drivers for wireless NICs under Linux. Downloaded and built it with no problems. Tried to load my NIC drivers, and the entire OS immediately locked up. Rebooted and tried a couple more times with the same results. Spent the next 2 days searching the web for solutions.
Day 6: Finally found a single post from someone who had the same hardware revision of the same card, who had been able to get it working using the 2.6.9 kernel. Burned the source to CD and installed it on Linux box, configured, compiled, rebooted, built ndiswrapper and it worked! Unfortunately, I couldn't get an address from DHCP server. Spent the rest of the day searching the web for solutions.
Day 7: Took a day off.
Day 8: Found out that I was using the wrong command to query DHCP (I was foolishly running dhcclient instead of dhcpcd, it's so obvious!), so now DHCP works and I can connect to the net without having to assign a static IP address. I spent the next couple days configuring the video drivers, audio drivers, and getting all the modules to configure correctly at boot-up.
Day 10: Started working on getting the video-capture card drivers working. Ran into a myriad of build errors right off the bat. Did some research and learned I needed to compile some extra features into the kernel before the drivers will build. So I reconfigure, build, install, reboot... and the kernel won't load. Decide to call it a day and have a few stiff drinks before I am tempted to toss the computer out the window.
Day 11: Okay, turned out it wasn't anything tragic, I booted to an older kernel, rebuilt the new kernel, and everything worked fine. But the capture card drivers still wouldn't build. Spent the rest of the day searching the web for solutions.
Day 12: Finally realized that all info I've found about using this particular capture card refers to the fact that the user was using a 2.4 kernel instead of 2.6. So I download the kernel source, configure, build, install, reboot... and now I can build and install the capture card drivers. Unfortunately, there are no drivers available in the kernel source for my motherboard sound chipset. But I figure I can address that problem later. I do a bunch of configuring, ho
Re:A story (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps your next project should be getting GNU HURD/L4 on a Mac Mini working with a firewire video capture device...
P.S. : as for the SATA issue, if you've done some XP installs recently, you are probably aware that XP installation requires a driver floppy inserted during a certain 20-second window for untraditional hard drive configs (RAID, SCSI, and I think SATA also). By analogy if nothing else, you should have had in the back of your mind that there might be difficulties with installing Linux on a SATA drive.
Re:A story (Score:5, Insightful)
In about 30 seconds, I found http://www.mythtv.org/ [mythtv.org] and within the documentation, nice RPM packages for Fedora which are installed by something as simple as "yum install mythtv-suite" (after telling yum about the repo). Discounting download time, I suspect you could have had this running within minutes on a Fedora or SuSE or even Debian install.
The wireless card support is a bad situation, and not much can be done about it aside from not giving that particular manufacturer any money (and letting them know they are losing sales). Other than that, your primary problem was that you chose Slackware.
Re:A story the Sequel (Score:5, Interesting)
I purchased the magazine which had Knoppix 3.x cd on the cover and booting my Father in laws pc ( windows , infected , dying ) proceeded to knx-hdinstall the operating system into the pc ( 3 yr old machine with router for internet connection ) . Completed the install of Knoppix Linux ( email configuration ) and rebooted. Showed In laws how to login , and mail and surf.
Day 2
Added In laws new digital camera
Day 3 through 365 : hear nothing from in laws but praise for system that works, has not been inconsistent and lets them use their computer as they "expected" to be able to use it
Day 366 : read story about user who makes poor purchasing descision and then complains about the product.
Day 367 : write sequel to story
okay the version of knoppix last year was old, but backing up their data to a usb flash drive and reinstalling to 3.7 the other day toook less than 10 minutes !
Windows vs.Linux vs. Mac OS X (Score:4, Interesting)
Then I got the chance to use Macs in college. They separated me even more from the technical side of computing and threw me even farther into the JUST a user crowd. This was OK. I had a chance to pursue more creative artistic endeavors without ever having to think about the computer as anything more than a music making tool, or a graphic editing tool, or a desktop publishing tool. This was OK.
When I graduated, I found that I couldn't afford a Mac and the Atari ST world was drying up. I was employed by a desktop publishing outfit that was PC based on an associate basis after I graduated. My employer was also kind of a mentor. I told him that I was in a quandry over PC vs. Mac. As he'd clearly gone the PC route but was handling desktop layout (engineering catalogs) for really big clients, I wondered whether or not I really needed to go Mac myself. At one point, I'd told him about the memory upgrade I built on my own for my Atari ST (I wired up a board to install SIMMs in it to get up to 2.5 Megs of RAM and saved myself considerable money) and he told me that I'd definitely be able to build a PC on my own. Up to that point I was afraid it would be too hard compared to the Mac. So in August of 1994, I built my first PC and installed DOS/Win31 on it. What surprised me was the lack of non-nagged shareware for DOS and Windows compared to the Atari ST. I wound up having to spend a lot of money on commercial products from Norton, Procomm, Microsoft, Aldus and Adobe. I found that Ihad to buy new versions/upgrades almost every year to year and a half as well. I went from Win31 to Win95. I learned that there were lots of thing about the Windows world that were half-assed compared to my experience with the Mac or even the Atari ST.
I got sick of the cost of computing with Windows and I tried Linux in 1995. I already had experience with *nix from a dial up shell account I got access to in College as well as VMS. So the prospect of running a nice flexible and easy to use CLI on my own PC compared to Windows 95 was very appealing. I had actually tried Linux in 1994 but when I failed to get X to run properly, I gave up on it since at that point I really wanted my PC to work like a Mac. The "killer apps" that got me to switch to Linux were Enlightment and GIMP. They were much closer to what I was accustomed to on the Mac and the ST and even my limited Amiga experience.
So between 1995 and 1999 I gradually moved further from Windows and more solidly to Linux. Al the while I've kept tabs on the Windows camp and I will say the Windows XP is probably the best version of Windows that Microsoft has made to date. It's the most stable version and the most user friendly version. It took the nearly 20 years, but they finally achieved parity with Mac OS 7 in terms of usability. Microsoft also finally acknowledged that the artistic community (musicians, graphic designers, videographers, etc...) is important too. I would argue that they are more important than business which is something that Microsoft still seems to fail to understand, but that is another discussion. However, these
Re:Maybe He Just Married a Moron (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Maybe He Just Married a Moron (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Maybe He Just Married a Moron (Score:5, Insightful)
Think about it. If it was a TV.
"My SO plugged the brand new TV into the cable system and 4 minutes later it stopped working." You SO is a moron. Why wasn't your SO smart enough to open the back of the TV and rewire the power supply!
Or if it was a car.
"My SO just got a new car and the engine was trashed after driving it 4 minutes."
Why was your SO so stupid to drive a brand new car with out first opening the hood and setting the valve clearance!
You statement is just dumb and insulting. She is not a moron. She is just not a system admin. What is moronic is that people are selling Windows XP boxes that are so insecure that they can not live on the Internet long enough to download SP2.
Maybe every Windows Box should come with the network stack inactive. When you want to connect to the Internet a special super restricted TCP/IP stack pops up and downloads the latest updates for you. Windows is being pushed as a consumer item it should be expected to act like one.
Re:Maybe He Just Married a Moron (Score:5, Interesting)
Not a very accurate analogy. Wouldn't it suck if the car were to unconditionally burst into flames unless you were sure to also purchase an extra $1000 in "safety features" and have them installed perfectly before ever attempting to drive it? (And without the dealer actually telling you this.)
Get it now? You microsoft apologists should really get a clue.
Re:Why does your usage of the PC suck? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why does your usage of the PC suck? (Score:5, Funny)
You don't drive a Ford I take it...
Re:NEWSFLASH! (Score:4, Funny)
NEWSFLASH # 4
Profit?
Re:The issue... (Score:4, Informative)
If you truly believe that viruses and other types of malware don't exploit these holes then I doubt I'll be able to convince you. Look around with Google.
Re:Mr Obvious answers your questions! (Score:4, Interesting)
1: Backup email - check
2: Backup bookmarks - check
3: Backup personal files - check
4: Backup porn/music/etc.. files - check
5: Import email into Mail.app - check
6: Import bookmarks into Safari/FireFox/etc... - check
7: Copy personal files into documents folder - check
8: hide porn in folder named "1997 tax records" - check
9: Import music into iTunes - Check
10: Profit.
It took me two hours to migrate my files from my Windows box to my Mac, not including the time iTunes needed to import my 17GB music collection from my file server. And that included installing Firefox (I don't care for Safari). The hardest part was finding a word processor that I liked when the 30-day trial version of Office ran out. But I never liked Word anyway.
Understand that when I migrated to Mac I had spent about an hour fooling around with OS X on a friends computer and had no real knowledge in what programs did what. Apple has very easy to understand help documents tailored to people moving to Mac from Windows.
Re:Only problem exists between chair and keyboard. (Score:5, Insightful)
So the biggest problem with Windows is the users? The solution is clear, then, get rid of Windows users: have them all buy a Mac or install Linux.
And then we'd be hearing instead, "The biggest problem with MacOS/Linux is that Apple/Linus gave a very powerful OS to Joe Servicepack who has NO CLUE how to get it stable and keep it stable."