My WinXP experience

[Javintosh]

I asked EDS about installing XP at work a few weeks back. I was told that I needed to fill out a form to get a waiver because XP installations are strictly controlled.

You see, some of the services that are turned on in the default installation of XP cause our Cisco routers to crash. In the process of crashing, these routers will crash the routers around them and so on... The routers on the network will continue to crash like dominoes falling until you hit a WAN link. EDS learned this the hard way because someone in one of our offices in California installed XP and took down an entire campus network as a result.

EDS took to the task of figuring out what the problem was and the employee promptly became an ex-employee.

So, I filled the forms for my XP install, I added my name to the XP registry at work and I put a work request for installation. It has to be done by EDS in a very specific way or else I'll be an ex-employee.

Between the time I put the work request and the scheduled installation time (early January) Micro$haft announces that their most secure operating system ever "contains several serious flaws that allow hackers to steal or destroy a victim's data files across the Internet or implant rogue computer software." As if that was not enough: "the glitches allow hackers to seize control of all Windows XP operating system software without requiring a computer user to do anything except connect to the Internet."

The funny thing is that in spite of the crippling damage the default XP installation will do to our netowrk the EDS croonies have been swearing that XP would be different. That MS would get it right this time. I bet one of them that someone would find a major security flaw in XP within 6 months of him installing XP on my computer. Boy am I going to gloat when I go back to work Jan 2!

The more Winblows changes, the more it sucks the same.

http://www.cnn.com/2001/TECH/ptech/1....ap/index.html

[simX]

Did you expect anything different? I'm glad you didn't, javintosh.

MS will always have security flaws. At least when Mac OS X has a security flaw, it can only be exploited when you are sitting right at the computer, and it is corrected in a matter of days (I wonder how long MS has been sitting on this flaw!).

UPDATE: Now that appleturns.com is broadcasting today's episode, I highly urge you all to mosey on over there and take a look at today's third post (at the bottom, silly). Deals with the new Microsoft security flaw in Windows XP, but it is a very humorous read... even though it's true down to every last word.

[rfraley]

Yeah, I know how you feel. The only thing keeping from migrating from the Dark Side is a Stevenote 3 weeks away. I am sick of Microsoft and their constant degradation of the security of my computer, it's crash happy ways (sure XP is more stable, but can you say the same about the security of Passport and .NET? Seriously I could crack .NET, I just have better things to do with my time.), the closed-system juggernaut of Microsoft, or the fact that what they do is a poory done and ineffective copy of Apple software, Windows XP only being the lastest examples of such?

My mother always shoots back with these arguments...
1. If you try to print a file that was done on Mac on a PC, you're up the creek.
( I told her that Microsoft has a version of Office that uses the same file formats as Office 97 and 2000 for the PC.)
2. Where can be find software?
(Sure, Windows might have 10x more software, but it truly has 10 times more crap. All essential programs have Mac equivalents.)
Internet Exploder: on the Mac OS X native
Media Player: on the Mac OS X native in q1 2002
Office: on the Mac OS X native
Messenger: Carbonized (OS X optimized)
I challenged her to find an app that didn't have a Windows eqivalent.
She could not find one.
She finally pointed at Morpheus. I showed her carracho.com
She still didn't get it...
I'm going to have to show her VPC running Winblows on the Mac. But then I need to find a Mac with enough RAM on it. Finding it online and burning it to a ISO 9660 shouldn't be a problem though...

[Lazarus18]

Did you catch the last line or so of the article where it talks about M$'s chief security guy leaving to work for the government as the head computer security guru in the land?

Yeah, looks like he did a bang up job fixing all that ails M$ products. Let's put him in charge! Then again working for M$ he has a lot of experience (or should that be XPerience?) with security holes needing fixing, it's just that it takes someone else showing them the problem first.

I feel safer already.

Actually, I do feel safer. I use a Mac.