World's Most Dangerous Virus ...

[Bob3]

The main point is that MS is making their new Office '03 so that owners/users of their older versions of Office (as well as open source products) will be forced to buy the new product if they want to be able to view any of the docs produced with the new file system.
How long can they keep going before there's a backlash against their unethical (if not illegal) business practices?

 

[norcaldiver]

Bob3 once bubbled...
The main point is that MS is making their new Office '03 so that owners/users of their older versions of Office (as well as open source products) will be forced to buy the new product if they want to be able to view any of the docs produced with the new file system.

Wrong. This is only a case IF you're running server 2003 AND running the WRM service AND using Office 2003 Professional. If I create a document in 2003 on my home machine and email it to you, you will be able to open it with office 95, 2000, xp, wordperfect, and your beloved sun etc.

 

[JohnVranesevich]

Greetings:

And if you want to talk about EXPENSIVE and PROPRIETARY: at least Microsoft didn't design their OS so that it only works on THEIR own proprietary hardware, aka Sun Microsystems and Solaris. Priced any new sun workstations or servers lately? Not exactly cheap.

I have a sun enterprise 450 here, and it cost me a bit more than a dell system would have. Actually, I could have a half dozen high end dell servers for what I paid for it.........

 

[khel]

Well, Sun OS runs just fine on my intel system, and it's not expensive at all

khel

 

[JohnVranesevich]

khel once bubbled...
Well, Sun OS runs just fine on my intel system, and it's not expensive at all

khel

Yes, well, it's a shame that they're discontinuing support for the intel versions, isn't it, hahaha.....

 

[DrownedRat]

cstreu1026 once bubbled...
Buy a Mac....problem solved

What and use it as a paper weight???
Sorry couldn't resist... Go linux, the distros now-a-days are sooo easy to install. About the only realy disadvantage is lack of real gaming support. Aside from that, Star office is a fantastic MS-Office replacement and is compatable with Windoze, mail and web browsing clients rock (mozilla etc), mp3 players, burner support, and the list goes on. The best part of all is all the various flavours of linux can be downloaded for free. Personally I have 2000Pro on my primary machine for games (yes I'm a game slut) which dosen't connect directly to the internet, and my linux box (mandrake 9.1) is my gateway to virus/trojan free (well mostly <grin>)net surfing .

Cheers

 

[adder70]

JohnVranesevich once bubbled...
Greetings:

And if you want to talk about EXPENSIVE and PROPRIETARY: at least Microsoft didn't design their OS so that it only works on THEIR own proprietary hardware, aka Sun Microsystems and Solaris. Priced any new sun workstations or servers lately? Not exactly cheap.

I have a sun enterprise 450 here, and it cost me a bit more than a dell system would have. Actually, I could have a half dozen high end dell servers for what I paid for it.........

So you say (or at least imply) that Windows is a decent OS and that at least they didn't make it proprietary to specific hardware. You then state that you could have 6 high end Dell servers for the same price.

So... Why exactly did you get the Sun?

 

[detroit diver]

JohnVranesevich once bubbled...
.............

It's hard to say that Microsoft's products have proven to be any less secure than product by any other software company. Hell, do a search for sendmail exploits and you'll see exactly what I mean.......
..........

Two words: Microsoft Outlook

The worst piece of swiss cheese software ever developed. Every virus program targets this awful email client because it's security is basically non-existent.

 

[JohnVranesevich]

adder70 once bubbled...


So you say (or at least imply) that Windows is a decent OS and that at least they didn't make it proprietary to specific hardware. You then state that you could have 6 high end Dell servers for the same price.

So... Why exactly did you get the Sun?

I was doing Information Warfare research for the Pentagon at the time (as a civilian contractor). They have standards, and I'm not the one that sets them, haha...

:hiding:

 

[Atticus]

JohnVranesevich once bubbled...


I was doing Information Warfare research for the Pentagon at the time (as a civilian contractor). They have standards, and I'm not the one that sets them, haha...

:hiding:

"Standards", yes... It's good to have standards...

In my home office:
FreeBSD ... gateway, mail, news, file server, etc.
Solaris ... software development (on sun hardware)
Windows ... software development, test
Windows ... end user software, web client, etc

I make my living writing software in both the unix and windows worlds. While much of the OS bashing is just a horrible flame war, there are some good points on either side.

Personally I'd like to see both OS's learn from one another (as they've been doing for years now). It's amazing (from a historical perspective) that you can actually hand a *user* a unix cd and expect them to install it without help (vs. early Berkeley releases on a vax). It's also incredible that Windows can be used as a server (for more than just file sharing).

Ten years ago I would have had a hard time believing either of these statements.

Back to the subject at hand -

The concept of centrally managed software is nothing new - in the enterprise market it's seen as a huge boon. If you're a poor IT guy with several hundred PC's to keep up to date it becomes pretty clear. MS is taking the concept a bit further. I haven't experimented with this, but it seems like a simple answer is to ask the user if they'd like to install the update (as many current packages do now).

I take it from the original post that that's not the plan?