Re: Microsoft Windows, will rule in the next 8 years in the marke t

<rant>

If you have to work with windows and it has to be up all the time then you have to do it right.

In a large corp. they may order 200 or so desktop systems at a time. The only way to put Windows on these in a timely fashion is to "ghost" it --- copy the disk image from another system. If you order from Dell or whatever the machine will come already ghosted. You don't think that they have the time to sit down with the CD and actually, individually install Windows?

Ghosted machines are not reliable because of small differences in the mother board, installed cards, etc. If you install Windows from the CD Windows is able to take each individual machine's qwirks into account.

I worked once at a place where everything had to work and our SA refused to accept any machine that came with the operating system installed. He would burn the disks down to bare metal, install DOS 3.3 from floppy (the last stable DOS, he claimed) and then install the operating system from CD.

Management was unhappy because it took a long time to upgrade people to new hardware. However, I worked there four years and no one ever had their machine lock up unexpectedly and I never took my Oracle database down except when I wanted to make a cold backup to copy to another machine - about 5 times.

I am amazed at the stories I hear of people who have to endure an unstable Windows environment. I regularly work with 20 open windows and some of these I'll leave up for months. My machine does not freeze or lock up, does not unexpectedly terminate programs, etc.

Why does Windows need so many security patches? Because it's the OS of choice for the everyday user. Why do bank robbers rob banks? Because that's where they keep the money. Why do hackers hack Windows? Because that's what most people use. So of course MS has to keep trying to stay one step ahead (or behind) of the hackers.

What's this myth about Unix being secure? Original Unix had NO security features. It used to be laughablely easy to crash a Unix system (there was even a system command to do it) and just about as easy to make yourself a super user. Unix, in all it's flavors, is constantly being patched. It's just that it requires much more skill (you can't just run a download patch from the vendor) and it's usually done by some SA in a back room. Very few Unix systems sit on clueless users' desks. If Linux ever approaches Windows in popularity then we will find out just how secure its basic concept is. I imagine that there are hackers today embedding trapdoors in Linux source code and looking for the payoff years from now when that code has become the accepted standard.

</rant>

Thanks for letting me get that off my chest. We now resume your normal programming.

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