I wrote 'Nuke Redmond'

From: technoid_at_cheta.net <(technoid_at_cheta.net)>
Date: Sat May 6 00:20:22 2000

>Is it truly necessary to fill the list with stuff like "Microsoft is awful",
>etc etc etc.?

One of the primary functions of this group is to advance computing
knowlege by disseminating information hard won through experience with
machines that 'have been'. I agree that simple admonitions such as
'Microsoft sux' are ameture and deserve little attention. I must protest
however. We know enough by far about various architectures to compare
them and Microsoft's products clearly do not pass muster. Not to say they
don't pass the average computer user's tests of ease of use or
understandability but thier underlying architectures are poorly designed
and prone to failure.

>I don't see how that is particularly related to classic
>computers...

These threads have everything to do with Classic computing as we have
been given the opportunity thereby to view the growth of many environments
and to compare them at thier various stages of growth.

>Like the "Nuke Redmond" thread, which filled my mailbox with
>probably 100+ messages which I had no desire at all to even look at. It is
>really annoying to check your mail, have about 70-100 messages, and have
>about 80 or so be pure garbage like that.

Fair enough. I anticipated more flames when I wrote that article than were
posted. I disagree that the original message and the threaded replies
were "pure garbage" or even impure garbage. Most of the 'replies' on that
thread had nothing to do with the original message which pertained to
Microsoft's disgusting habit of destroying people and companies rather
than competing decently. You are discussing topics with peers not morons.
We really know of what we speak.

>Besides, not everyone dislikes Microsoft's products. I for one, like their products a >lot, I'm using Win 98SE right now, and our NT server has been running continuously for >about 4 years now, no crashes at all.

I don't believe you have had a four year uptime with NT unless your NT box
is not connected to a network. At least admit you reboot the machine from
time to time. The best Uptime I have had on an NT machine is NT4 Terminal
Server which stayed up for six months without a reboot. I feel NT is a
qualified server OS but my particular circumstance is an NT machine with
little network activity. On other larger NT server networks I work on I
have to reboot the server as often as once per week to maintain decent
availability. I think it has to do with hash tables NT creates to deal
with high-demand network activity. My guess is NT does not deallocate the
ram allocated to these processes which eventually degrades network
performance to the degree that the admin must 'deallocate' this ram by
manually rebooting the server at intervals defined by the level of use the
server receives.

As far as 95/98 is concerned, if you know anything about the underlying
foundation of an operating system you must admit that 95/98 is a horrible
kluge. I agree that 98 is much better than 95 in terms of stability but
neither will ever be a great operating system because thier foundation is
nonexistent. I liken 9x to an upside-down pyramid based the MSDOS
interrupt handler.

I could imagine a 9x system being stable despite it's poor foundation if
that foundation were made of diamond. This would not be an estheticly
pleaseing operating system but it could be made stable if it's core were
very strong. My main objection to 9x is that application installs replace
core components with non-tested ones ( at least in that given
configuration ). In other words, each Windows machine is unique in it's
core configuration. This is a dangerous design approach and invites
nearly infinite opportunities for incompatabilities and general
instability.

>And I do have experience with other OS's, I
>also run BeOS on my machine, I also run Solaris, Netware, VMS, RT-11, OS-32,
>Infoshare, CP/M, MacOS, UnixWare, and HP-UX. I'd say VMS is my favorite,
>BeOS is up there, same with UnixWare + Win 98, with Linux, Netware,

Bully for you and I mean that. Experiencing other operating systems is a
tremendous learning tool. Ease of use is important but more important
still is stability. My guess - and only a guess is that you have not
actually run these alternate opertating systems in a production
environment and so cannot guage thier relative stability.

>MacOS being my all-time least favorites.

Macos is pretty stable but I'd have to agree with you that it's not very
pretty. It lacks a lot in terms of configurability that I look for in an
operating system. That opinion does not affect the fact that it has been
proven stable and users don't have to muck with it to make it work.

>I wouldn't even consider running a
>Linux machine unless there was money in it for me ;p Anyway, I've now added
>some of what I hate, going against the entire message I was saying, but
>anyway, how about having the list a bit more on topic?

I don't blame you. Linux is not ready for Prime Time on the desktop. It
lacks the level of user-pretties and network configurability I would look
for in a desktop environment. My personal choice would be OS/2 for just
about everything desktop related. I wish IBM had the guts to market it.

-- 
-----------------------------------------------------------
Jeffrey S. Worley
Technical Services
Who is General Failure and why is he reading my hard disk?
Technoid_at_Cheta.net
-----------------------------------------------------------
Received on Sat May 06 2000 - 00:20:22 BST

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