On Tuesday 02 July 2002 04:37, James.Rocks@equant.com wrote:
Hi Steve,
Thanks for your reply, obviously you have considerable experience/expertise in the field of Linux vs Windows servers and have formed your opinions on the basis of that and I respect that. I however have not got that depth of experience (though I'm working on it) and so cannot make such an informed judgement ... I will say however (as you may have gathered from the last reply) that Windows is a better OS than some would have us believe. I agree that it is overbloated and far in excess of what is needed on a server ... yes, technical is good for admins but not so good for ordinary users :-)
True, I was referring to servers. Desktops should be easy to use. It's purpose is to help a human. A server's is to help other computers, different needs.
I have only one problem with your reply:
Why are you lying to me about what I have clearly observed?
That's a bit strong saying I am "lying" isn't it? I may be right, I may be wrong but ultimately all I had was an opinion ... I wasn't lying!
Sorry, I was not referring to you, but MS.
Nevertheless your reply was interesting :-)
I'm glad you found it so. I do understand your opinion, and I don't want so sound condescending, but it's common amongs MS educated people. They don't have an unbiased education. It is, if you trace it back, originating from MS. Let's take it to the extreme. F.ex. you get a computer to defend your family and country in war. The manufacturer says it's certified and you can totally trust us to be on top of your computer. MS promoted NT 4 to be C2 certified (that's a government security level) but what they did not (openly) say was that it was only C2 as long as you did not plug it into a network. That's pretty big misrepresentation. You may not be at war but it's a poor excuse not to be forthright about the truth. You are betting your business, livelyhood and possibly even employees livelyhood on it being true. (When I do something for a company, like implementing security policies, I don't think of how I can make more money on them. I have one thing in mind, do a good job! The best kind of job security, pun not intended.) This has been going on with MS since pretty early on. Indeed their way of operating show little care for things like the law or common good. (Please don't say that's what companies does because that does not make it any more right.) So we all have a way of doing things, it is in fact a Way of Life. Like it being wrong for a gypsie not to steal when there's an opportunity. Over and over MS violate our rights in various covert ways. Know they cannot be trusted to to have done something when they claim to have done so. You now end up with a number of very skilled people testing windows releases, patches and so on, to see if it's working as advertized. (Talk about bad reputation!) After having been following MS since it was founded, and used most of their products, patches and what not's, I can truly say they deserve their reputation, maybe not in every aspect, but in general. Take stability. Windows can be run stably for 365 days without crashing. IF, you know exactly how to configure it. Which clearly cannot be that easy judging by the volume of unhappy admins. The thing is you are only supposed to run ONE application on each server. "Glass house" if you are familiar with the term. Meaning Do Not Touch Once It's Working! Why is that? Well to earn a windows certification a program only have to be able to work by itself on a computer, not co-exisist. Why is that?? Because the foundation of the design is flawed! It is like a deck of cards. Look at any *nix. It has a sound design foundation. It was not even designed to be secure. Only to easily forward communication any which way. True to form, you CAN quite readily secure a *nix box because of sound design. In the famous Halloween Paper (internal MS memo that leaked on Haloween a few years ago) the programmer said he could not help himself from writing a couple of drivers for Linux (while investigating it on their behalf) because it was so easy. What does that tell you? Now enter Linux left stage. It has the source code available for everyone to inspect. Flaws are being found and fixed readily and willingly. Often overnight. MS has a hell of a time to fix anything. It's project managers don't even know what all the code is for in applications. At one point Word had over 2MB of code it did not dare to remove because they did not know what it did. What kind of project management is that?!? SLOPPY, SLOPPY SLOPPY!!! No excuse in the world can excuse that kind of a thing. So w2k might be pretty, it is a number of things, including better than it's predecessors. But am I willing to spend all the time and money it needs to operate nicely and safely in each of their more expensive boxes? Nope. You see, I grew up before windows entered center stage. I had higher standards that set the tone for how computers can work. Later people (flamebait) got lazy and current admins were fooled out of a proper education. (I'd ask for a refund.) When I see what the Linux community is accomplishing (a bunch of programmers from all over the planet) without the coordination and money you'd think is possible at MS. Got them running scared. I cannot but smile at the irony. Linux is a grassroot movement because it is what people want. Not because of lazy attitudes or advertising or whatever. When it's all said and done, it has deliverd at a much higher level than any windows has done. . Live the Linux adventure and know it will deliver... : ) -- Steve _____________________________________________________________ HTML in e-mail is not safe. It let's spammers know to spam you, and sets you up for online attack through IE 4.5 and above. Using HTML in e-mail promotes it as safe to the uninitiated.