Very Computer

On Tue, 22 Oct 2002 15:56:21 GMT, Pookybug assert()ed:

Quote:> Q. Now that you recognize the total victory of Microsoft, are there any
> specific issues involved in upgrading from Linux to Windows?

> A. Yes. There's no direct 'upgrade' path per se. To upgrade to Windows from
> Linux requires a 'clean' installation of Windows. This is a good thing
> because a complete clean install means all the vestiges of the Linux
> operating system are 'rooted out' and cleaned from your harddrive.

> Realize that you may have to save,  or backup onto other media - or to
> another store - such things as documents, bookmarks etc. if you want them
> once Windows is installed.

> Also prepare yourself for a shock.  You will meet with something you've
> never experienced before in computing: quality.

> Quality applications, quality programs by professionals .. people who work
> 24-7 to just make things work and work well. Gone will be the gigabytes of
> second rate, slapped together, incomplete non-professional software by
> unpaid Linux, for want of a better word, 'losers'.

> Instead you will be dealing with winners. Winners like Microsoft Corp. which
> has made more money this quater than any company has ever! Success is a
> wonderful thing. When you experience it for the first time you will never
> want to go back to Linux.

> Pookybug
> Part II coming soon.

Is Part II entitled, "Choosing the best virus scanner for your needs?"

--
General Protection Fault

 11:15am  up 3 days, 12:02,  1 user,  load average: 0.00, 0.04, 0.03
Linux nitrogen.ertw.com 2.4.18-17.7.x i586 unknown

Error log for Tue, 22 Oct 2002 15:56:21 +0000, segfault in module
"Pookybug": dump details are as follows...

Quote:> Q. Now that you recognize the total victory of Microsoft, are there any
> specific issues involved in upgrading from Linux to Windows?

> A. Yes. There's no direct 'upgrade' path per se. To upgrade to Windows
> from Linux requires a 'clean' installation of Windows. This is a good
> thing because a complete clean install means all the vestiges of the
> Linux operating system are 'rooted out' and cleaned from your harddrive.

> Realize that you may have to save,  or backup onto other media - or to
> another store - such things as documents, bookmarks etc. if you want
> them once Windows is installed.

And the real reason for this is because the "quality" that is Windows is
unable to read or write to any of the formats that Linux can and does
easily read and write to.

Of course, if you happen to be running Linux on, say, a DEC workstation or
a PowerPC, then you will have to s*all of that "inferior" hardware and
go purchase a commodity PC, because the "quality" that is Windows does not
run on many of the platforms that Linux can and does run on.

Quote:> Also prepare yourself for a shock.  You will meet with something you've
> never experienced before in computing: quality.

This is true, no other platform will regularly and constistently require
you to spend money on a regular basis in order to obtain the "quality"
applications in order to obtain the same functionality that you have with
LGX and OSS for *free*.

Quote:> Quality applications, quality programs by professionals .. people who
> work 24-7 to just make things work and work well. Gone will be the
> gigabytes of second rate, slapped together, incomplete non-professional
> software by unpaid Linux, for want of a better word, 'losers'.

And of course, if you need or desire any feedback from these
"professionals", you can always call the toll free support line and speak
to some underpaid and underqualified peon who will of course tell you to
"reboot, retry, reinstall", if they do not tell you to get lost first
because they don't support that issue.

And forget about speaking with the actual *developers* of said software,
or even the president of said vendor, since they have no time in their
"professional" lives to bother with the end user.

And if you want to ever add or modify the program to suit your particular
purposes, well then your option is to submit a request to the vendor and
hope that about a million other users have requested the same changes, and
then MAYBE you will see it incorporated in the next release in a couple of
years.

This is much better than the "non-professional" way of OSS where you can
interact directly with the creator and developers themselves and request
changes, report issues, and have full access to source so you can modify
the program specifically for your own needs.

Not to mention that the development cycle is much faster since it is so
unprofessional, so updates are released regularly and quickly, often
incorporating fixes and features that the commercial variants take very
long to include.

Quote:

> Instead you will be dealing with winners. Winners like Microsoft Corp.
> which has made more money this quater than any company has ever! Success
> is a wonderful thing. When you experience it for the first time you will
> never want to go back to Linux.

Indeed.  Forget about all the money and hassle that you saved by using LGX
and OSS.  Now you get to pay for every program that you need and/or want.

Now you get to experience strange problems that noone can help you with
and that can't be resolved.  Coerced upgrade cycles, multitudes of
vulnerabilities and virii, worms and trojans to worry about for which you
will have to spend more money to obtain a "professional" quality
anti-virus program to protect against.

And don't forget the "professional" quality Office suite that you will
have to purchase seperately in order to be productive.  And if you are a
developer, you can take out a loan and purchase the "professional" quality
development suites so that you can do what you could for free with LGX,
and of course you will have to spend even more money if you need any
special libraries since they are not included.

Now you get the privilege of dealing with liscences and EULA's and misc
other restrictions associated with just using your computer.  And you have
the satisfaction of knowing that you can always spend more money to
upgrade to a supported version when your hardware or software becomes
obsolete and is no longer supported by the vendor.

Quote:> Pookybug
> Part II coming soon.

Looking forward to it.

--
rapskat -  12:08pm  up 24 days, 12:53,  1 user,  load average: 1.52, 1.56, 1.08
108 processes: 100 sleeping, 8 running, 0 zombie, 0 stopped
CPU states:  0.0% user,  0.0% system,  0.1% nice,  0.0% idle

Of course there's no reason for it, it's just our policy.

I recently installed a virus checker on my Windows XP box at home. Guess
how many virii I descovered (on a system with about five years worth of
data on it, collected on Windows 98 SE, ME onwards)?

One suspected script file. In a JPEG.

ONE!

--
Pete Goodwin, using Mozilla 1.1 on Windows 2000.
"You did not see me, I was not here".

On Tue, 22 Oct 2002 12:29:50 -0400, rapskat assert()ed:

Quote:> Error log for Tue, 22 Oct 2002 15:56:21 +0000, segfault in module
> "Pookybug": dump details are as follows...

>> Q. Now that you recognize the total victory of Microsoft, are there any
>> specific issues involved in upgrading from Linux to Windows?

>> A. Yes. There's no direct 'upgrade' path per se. To upgrade to Windows
>> from Linux requires a 'clean' installation of Windows. This is a good
>> thing because a complete clean install means all the vestiges of the
>> Linux operating system are 'rooted out' and cleaned from your harddrive.

>> Realize that you may have to save,  or backup onto other media - or to
>> another store - such things as documents, bookmarks etc. if you want
>> them once Windows is installed.

> And the real reason for this is because the "quality" that is Windows is
> unable to read or write to any of the formats that Linux can and does
> easily read and write to.

Supposedly the new Office will use XDocs, which means Office will read/write
in XML format.  SQL Server .NET will do this too, from what I read.

Quote:> Of course, if you happen to be running Linux on, say, a DEC workstation or
> a PowerPC, then you will have to s*all of that "inferior" hardware and
> go purchase a commodity PC, because the "quality" that is Windows does not
> run on many of the platforms that Linux can and does run on.

Good point.

Quote:>> Also prepare yourself for a shock.  You will meet with something you've
>> never experienced before in computing: quality.

> This is true, no other platform will regularly and constistently require
> you to spend money on a regular basis in order to obtain the "quality"
> applications in order to obtain the same functionality that you have with
> LGX and OSS for *free*.

I disagree with that -- my wife and I use all free-as-in-beer software on
Windows.
x Mozilla
x OpenOffice.org
x Winamp
x Eudora
x NetBeans IDE
x JBoss

Yes, I deviate and use a MSDN version of Visual Studio .NET, but it's not
a necessity.

Quote:>> Quality applications, quality programs by professionals .. people who
>> work 24-7 to just make things work and work well. Gone will be the
>> gigabytes of second rate, slapped together, incomplete non-professional
>> software by unpaid Linux, for want of a better word, 'losers'.

> And of course, if you need or desire any feedback from these
> "professionals", you can always call the toll free support line and speak
> to some underpaid and underqualified peon who will of course tell you to
> "reboot, retry, reinstall", if they do not tell you to get lost first
> because they don't support that issue.

This is mostly true, although at $WORK{-1} we had a problem with COM+
and had an actual COM+ developer work with us, since it was a COM+ bug.
We even got to send our code in to be checked.
<insert mandatory microsoft-stealing-code quip here>

Quote:> And forget about speaking with the actual *developers* of said software,
> or even the president of said vendor, since they have no time in their
> "professional" lives to bother with the end user.

See above.

Quote:> And if you want to ever add or modify the program to suit your particular
> purposes, well then your option is to submit a request to the vendor and
> hope that about a million other users have requested the same changes, and
> then MAYBE you will see it incorporated in the next release in a couple of
> years.

That's the worst part.

Quote:> This is much better than the "non-professional" way of OSS where you can
> interact directly with the creator and developers themselves and request
> changes, report issues, and have full access to source so you can modify
> the program specifically for your own needs.

That's the best part.

Quote:> Not to mention that the development cycle is much faster since it is so
> unprofessional, so updates are released regularly and quickly, often
> incorporating fixes and features that the commercial variants take very
> long to include.

You're on a roll, rappy.

Quote:>> Instead you will be dealing with winners. Winners like Microsoft Corp.
>> which has made more money this quater than any company has ever! Success
>> is a wonderful thing. When you experience it for the first time you will
>> never want to go back to Linux.

> Indeed.  Forget about all the money and hassle that you saved by using LGX
> and OSS.  Now you get to pay for every program that you need and/or want.

Not true.  See above.  Although it doesn't sound like PookyBug will be
using free software anytime soon.

Quote:> Now you get to experience strange problems that noone can help you with
> and that can't be resolved.  Coerced upgrade cycles, multitudes of
> vulnerabilities and virii, worms and trojans to worry about for which you
> will have to spend more money to obtain a "professional" quality
> anti-virus program to protect against.

The kid is hot tonite!

Quote:> And don't forget the "professional" quality Office suite that you will
> have to purchase seperately in order to be productive.  And if you are a
> developer, you can take out a loan and purchase the "professional" quality
> development suites so that you can do what you could for free with LGX,
> and of course you will have to spend even more money if you need any
> special libraries since they are not included.

You don't have to purchase Office to be productive.  There's OpenOffice,
goBeProductive, etc.

As a developer, you have the choice between developing .NET, Java, or regular
Win32.  Java tools are free.  .NET tools are free (.NET Framework SDK,
SharpDevelop (which doesn't suck so bad anymore)), Java tools are free,
and Win32 tools are mostly free (Platform SDK).  It's just that lots of
people pay big buxx for convenience.

Quote:> Now you get the privilege of dealing with liscences and EULA's and misc
> other restrictions associated with just using your computer.  And you have
> the satisfaction of knowing that you can always spend more money to
> upgrade to a supported version when your hardware or software becomes
> obsolete and is no longer supported by the vendor.

Smokin'!

Quote:>> Part II coming soon.

> Looking forward to it.

Same here.  Although I confess I'm looking forward to your response even more.

--
General Protection Fault

 11:30am  up 3 days, 12:17,  1 user,  load average: 0.00, 0.04, 0.03
Linux nitrogen.ertw.com 2.4.18-17.7.x i586 unknown

Pookybug was seen in

comp.os.linux.advocacy to propose the following:

Quote:> Q. Now that you recognize the total victory of Microsoft, are there any
> specific issues involved in upgrading from Linux to Windows?

1) Microsoft has not won... in fact it losing all over the place.

2) You can't upgrade from Linux to ms-windows. Ms-windows is much slower
on identical hardware at doing the tasks I have to do. Ms-windows is far
less stable on this machine. I've never been able to get the default
factory install of ms-windows on this machine to stay up for more than a
day without lockups and bluescreens... and I haven't installed that much
in the way of ms-windows software on it either to bloat the registry up
from it's original size either... MSIE falls over at frequent intervals
for no apparent reason. Outlook express can't even handle quotation
wrapping properly without the aid of a third party addon. I do not need
to worry about all those scripting viruses etc. that regularly arrive in
unsolicited emails from friends stuck with ms-windows. I don't have to
install third party software to monitor the installation of programs so
that they can be sucessfully de-installed at a later date either... or
software to intercept crashes either so that I can save my work as it
doesn't crash in the first place.. I don't have to worry about media
playing software sending my listening/viewing habits back to it's maker.
My internet history and cache is easily purged and no data is stored in
weirdly named hidden directories either.

so how can it be an upgrade to Ms-windows???

--
Paul Cooke
  Registered Linux user 273897 Machine registration number 156819
  Linux Counter: Home Page = http://counter.li.org/
  5:35pm  up 9 days, 21:24,  5 users,  load average: 0.14, 0.31, 0.18

On Tue, 22 Oct 2002 17:26:25 +0100, Pete Goodwin assert()ed:

I suggest you update your signatures.

--
General Protection Fault

 12:00pm  up 3 days, 12:47,  1 user,  load average: 0.00, 0.02, 0.00
Linux nitrogen.ertw.com 2.4.18-17.7.x i586 unknown

On tis, 22 okt 2002 at 17:56 GMT, gazing longingly at the horizon,

felt a deep, passionate desire to let the following be known:

Quote:> Part II coming soon.

That's one sequel I can bear to miss this year.

Thanks for playing tho.

--
Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana.      Perth ---> *
  6:46pm  up  2:26,  9 users,  load average: 0.13, 0.18, 0.39
$ cat /dev/bollocks                      Registered Linux user #261729
engineer plug-and-play convergence

So you have problems getting NIC's to work under windows as well? How
many floppy drives have you gone through during that 5 years? Of
course before MS discovered the Internet most virus' were spread using
floppies. Bet you were crawling with them in those days.

On Tue, 22 Oct 2002 18:51:23 +0200, Roy Culley assert()ed:

Never underestimate the mean throughput of Sneakernet adapters.

--
General Protection Fault

 12:30pm  up 3 days, 13:17,  1 user,  load average: 0.00, 0.04, 0.00
Linux nitrogen.ertw.com 2.4.18-17.7.x i586 unknown

For it was written by Pete Goodwin:

Quote:> I recently installed a virus checker on my Windows XP box at home. Guess
> how many virii I descovered (on a system with about five years worth of
> data on it, collected on Windows 98 SE, ME onwards)?

> One suspected script file. In a JPEG.

> ONE!

Just had 5 emails with virii sent to me this evening.

Love it!

--
Ian

Here with a loaf of bread beneath the bough
A flask of wine, an onion, a book of verse -- and thou
Beside me singing in the wilderness
And wilderness is paradise enow.

Uh, they were the latest virus update files at the time of installation.

--
Pete Goodwin, running on Windows XP

I think I saw one other virus. On my Acorn Archimedes. I saw _zero_ on my
Windows 95 PC. As for floppy drives, they are the originals. What on
earth are you on about?

--
Pete Goodwin, running on Windows XP

On Tue, 22 Oct 2002 19:24:15 GMT, Pete Goodwin assert()ed:

If this machine went from 98 -> ME -> XP, then it's most likely you reinstalled
the applications, which would have been the most likely infection targets.

Your data will rarely contain viruses.

Think about it.  Every time you reinstall, you wipe out most if not all
viruses.

--
General Protection Fault

  2:25pm  up 3 days, 15:12,  1 user,  load average: 0.00, 0.02, 0.00
Linux nitrogen.ertw.com 2.4.18-17.7.x i586 unknown

Pete Goodwin wrote on Tuesday 22 October 2002 11:26 in message

Quote:> I recently installed a virus checker on my Windows XP box at home. Guess
> how many virii I descovered (on a system with about five years worth of
> data on it, collected on Windows 98 SE, ME onwards)?

> One suspected script file. In a JPEG.

> ONE!

You know how many I've got on my Linux box that contains data that was
gathered from 1998 onwards?

Zero, nada, nil, zip, zilch.

None at all.

As it turns out, what's a "virus" in Windows is simply garbage bytes in
Linux.

--
Dave Leigh, Consulting Systems Analyst
Cratchit.org

I also hear installing Windows can help with lower back pain from
heavy wallet syndrome.

Charlie

Arch-angle of death for E-business is!!!!  PASSPORT!!