Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

Hey all....I wasn't sure where to post this, so I figured the BASS section would suit. Peter, feel free to move this thread as you see fit...

I am experiencing MAJOR computer problems at home, and I can't access my personal e-mail AT ALL ..AND I can't access the forum at my work....I am LUCKY to be able to post tonight. If anyone is trying to get in contact with me, I can be reached thru my work e-mail address chrispappas at noland dot com....OR you can e-mail me at that address and I can send you my phone # to chat....sorry for the inconvenience.

Oh well....we were due to get a new computer soon, anyway...

Well...it's working TONIGHT!....geeesh...I hate computers when they're not working right....HATE 'em!

.....get an Apple.

yes... apples are sweet. What are viruses again?

I used to be a Unix system administrator ... now I am a windows system administrator ... in other words I spend a lot of time reformatting and reloading computers to get a good clean working installation of windows on a computer ...

My Apples have been virus and worm-free since 1980, when I bought my very first, a 64K Apple II+ with daisy wheel printer and two 5 1/4" floppy drives.

Cost me $5500! Silly, silly toy.

Now I'm working on G3s and G4s, which cost about $300 each on the 'Bay. I also have a Windows 2000 machine at my office that I use for exercises in anger management.

I am a Linux and Windows administrator. Our Linux servers (14 of them) run for months on end with nary a problem. We have to reboot our Windows servers regularly because Microsoft updates often require it. Despite good antivirus protection, we are constantly putting our Windows workstations back together. We have more than 1200 of them and at any time 10 to 20 of them require attention. To be fair though, since we started rolling out Win 2000 and XP boxes with patch management there have been far fewer total failures.

XP is a step in the right direction (and longhorn even more so since MS has had since 2001 to study OS X)... but our XP computers at work have far more issues than the apples at work.

OS X is based on BSD Unix. The layered architecture of Unix makes fixing and containing security problems easier. Microsoft has for years used a monolithic design that is largely devoid of layers of indirection. This was a seriously flawed design decision that MS would later regret. Security problems became hugely systemic as a result. Hence the headlines and the public's now acute awareness of worms and viruses. Service packs for NT and 2000 were HUGE and included replacement binaries for programs like solitaire and notepad even though they were not part of the problem because everything was hard linked in the system libs. Any changes could break any code that made calls there. Longhorn is supposed to be a total rewrite (they should have called it Longtime!) that uses more layering. This will allow for smaller and more precise patches for security holes, and dare we hope, a more secure version of Windows.

longhorn even more so...

...although Longhorn will not be introduced on time, according to latest reports.

The link above relates bugs in Word that Smith (author) would like to see fixed.

One bug allows mods to documents by the last ten authors to be seen when a dump is done.

This revealed to Smith, when he downloaded the Microsoft Annual Report, that the report was edited on a Mac G3.

Oops.

You've just gotta love those Redmond kids!

I hate it when my abacus runs slow too....

I once saw an old chinese man tally business transaction using just an abacus. He said he could enter numbers and perform arithmetic faster on an abacus than he could using a calculator. The way he pushed those beads around! It was and amazing thing to watch.

We can argue about Apples and PC forever but one fact makes all the difference for me- there's approximately 12,000 programs written for the PC versus every 1 for the Apple.

If I need a program to convert an IGES file with meters to a CADL file with Tibetan cubits, I know I can find a low cost or free one on the 'Net in a couple of minutes.

I wish I could say I don't need that all that programming diversity but after owning and operating computers for 35 years now, I know I do.

Nevertheless, I did chuckle when IBM did the big photoshoot in our factory for their software. The Big Blue execs all hung out, watched the photographer at work and looked over his shoulder to see the results on his MAC.