SP2 drove me to open source

Thanks to Microsoft's WindowsXP SP2, I have finally made the move to open
source applications. I've wanted to make the move for some time but some
laziness on my part has delayed me. Thanks, Billy, for pushing out the SP2
and specifically the security center because that horrid piece of programming
(I call SP2 the new WinME) finally made me so angry and frustrated with you
and your company that I built up a Linux box at home and will soon be
migrating all of my personal equipment over to the Penguin. If I am browsing
and come across some content that will only work in your non-W3c standards
compliant browser, I refuse to view it. DId you notice that FireFox 1.0 was
downloaded over a million times the first DAY it was available? Hallelujiah!


I am the systems administrator at a television station and so am used to
dealing with new technology. I have never had as many problems with a single
piece of software (and let me tell you, video-editing, TV production, and
graphics software can be extremely touchy and hard to work with) as I have
with SP2. It has bolluxed up so many systems at my station, rendering some
applications totally unusable, that I have removed it from every machine I
have. I've talked to the administration and we are looking into moving away
from all MS products and following the growing trend of dismantling our
Windows infrastructure.

I truly hope that the recent trend in computing to move away from the
monopolistic domination of MS is but the first scratchings of the proverbial
writing on the wall that will soon say that MS is on its way out. Maybe it
won't come soon, certainly not soon enough for any thinking and rational IT
person, but I think it is coming and on that day I will rejoice.

Thanks, again, Billy. SP2 did it's job well enough for me.

=?Utf-8?B?dmVsb3pvb20zMA==?=:
Have you tried Novell Linux Desktop? Really sweet.
www.novell.com/linux/index.php

"Leythos" wrote:



If you really had any experience with Windows XP and any other computer
technology, and you weren't just a troll, you would have had no problems
with SP2. I've got almost 1000 installs of SP2 on many platforms and have
only had two problems, and both were fixed by BIOS Updates from the PC's
vendor.

Question- if you thought I was a troll, why did you bite the baited hook,
Mr. Fish?

Obviously, you presume to know my experience when it is you, sirrah, who
hasn't a clue. Have you ever installed SP2 on a WinXP box running Chyron
Lyric software? If you want to see a program crash faster than a tractor
trailer driven by a chimpanzee just give it a go. Do you have any experience
running the IT operations of a television station and production studio? If
you do, let us know, but I will not presume to make judgements on your
experience when I have no idea who you even are. I laugh at trash-talking
internet peeps with e-balls.

My expereince with SP2 is good enough to know that it DOES NOT work with a
great deal of the software that my users run. ENPS (from AP news) is our new
wire-service platform and SP2 has to be disabled as much as the babysitters
at MS will allow for it to run properly. Our prompter software crashed
completely after SP2 and the box had to be entirely rebuilt since even a full
uninstall of SP2 didn't fix all the problems it caused. My mistake was
testing SP2 on non-mission critical boxes that just had to run basic software
before implementing it station-wide. What a nightmare week that was. Sure,
it works fine on boxes you don't do more than e-mail, word processing, and
chatting on. It's friggin awesome then, Mr. Fish, and it's still on some of
the sales dept's computers. But in MY business world, it sucks donkey
schlong.

Did I ever say that Linux was perfect and without holes? Hells no. Nothing
is perfect. It's the overall viewpoint of the software makers that I am
looking at. MS is all about expanding its worldwide software hegemony
whereas open source is about improvement for improvement's sake. Can I get
an amen?

Psychophants that follow after Billy waiting for a few meager scraps from
his table strike me as the most spineless of all IT people.

If you ever get into web devlopment you will perhaps then see the issues of
MS v. The World more clearly. Ask any real developer about the crap that is
Frontpage or .asp. I know some guys who are forced to use .asp and IIS but
that is only because the short sighted suit-wearers in the big, corner
offices make them use MS products. Had they a choice (this is pretty much a
universal opinion among the many developers I know and work with) they would
run LAMP (Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP) boxes for ALL of their web projects and
leave the proprietary MS stuff in the shrink-wrapped box where it works best.


Is this a troll, too? If you don't like what I am saying, I am sure you
will say yes.

Is this a troll, too? If you don't like what I am saying, I am sure you
will say yes.

of course not, its an anti-ms rant in a newsgroup that is off topic.

"Dave" wrote:


Is this a troll, too? If you don't like what I am saying, I am sure you
will say yes.

of course not, its an anti-ms rant in a newsgroup that is off topic.


Off topic? How is it off topic? Isn't the topic here to discuss security
and administration of Wiindows boxes? My job is to administer the computer
and information systems for my employer and part of that administration was a
horrific experience with SP2. If I were to have written that I loved SP2 and
had no problems with the administration of it would you have said the post
was off topic? I sincerely doubt it. It is "off topic" because it
contravenes your belief system and so you don't really want to listen.

velozoom30 wrote:
|| "Leythos" wrote:
|| Have you ever installed SP2 on a WinXP box
|| running Chyron Lyric software? If you want to see a program crash
|| faster than a tractor trailer driven by a chimpanzee just give it a
|| go.

So did you find out from the vendor first whether it was compatible with SP2
or did you just go blindly ahead anyway? If that's what you did then you'll
have FUN with Linux!

--
Interim Systems and Management Accounting
Gordon Burgess-Parker
Director
www.gbpcomputing.co.uk

Leythos wrote:
|| On Fri, 18 Mar 2005 16:10:55 +0000, Gordon wrote:
|||
||| velozoom30 wrote:
||||| "Leythos" wrote:
||||| Have you ever installed SP2 on a WinXP box
||||| running Chyron Lyric software? If you want to see a program crash
||||| faster than a tractor trailer driven by a chimpanzee just give it
||||| a go.
|||
||| So did you find out from the vendor first whether it was compatible
||| with SP2 or did you just go blindly ahead anyway? If that's what
||| you did then you'll have FUN with Linux!
||
|| I asked the same thing in a reply to him, but he's not answered yet
||

Some systems admin! ;-)

--
Interim Systems and Management Accounting
Gordon Burgess-Parker
Director
www.gbpcomputing.co.uk

"velozoom30" wrote in message
...


"Dave" wrote:


Is this a troll, too? If you don't like what I am saying, I am sure
you
will say yes.

of course not, its an anti-ms rant in a newsgroup that is off topic.


Off topic? How is it off topic? Isn't the topic here to discuss security
and administration of Wiindows boxes? My job is to administer the
computer

no, its to discuss "security administration" not "security and
administration", there are other general groups for misc xp problems. maybe
you should try ..windowsxp.perform_maintain, or
...windowsxp.configuration_manage, or better yet, ..windowsxp.newuser.

So did you find out from the vendor first whether it was compatible with SP2
or did you just go blindly ahead anyway? If that's what you did then you'll
have FUN with Linux!

--

Of course I did. they initially said it would be fine. The second tech I
called after the debalce said no way. Yes, this was a breakdown on their end
but this was just one app that Sp2 crashed. If it was just one, I would
blame the graphics company for making a too-fragile product.

velozoom30 wrote:
||| So did you find out from the vendor first whether it was compatible
||| with SP2 or did you just go blindly ahead anyway? If that's what
||| you did then you'll have FUN with Linux!
|||
||| --
||
|| Of course I did.

And then being the cynic that you are you TESTED it for yourself before
rolling out SP2?


--
Interim Systems and Management Accounting
Gordon Burgess-Parker
Director
www.gbpcomputing.co.uk

Because it's fun to play with trolls sometimes.

I couldn't agree more.



If you were as seasoned as you claimed, you would have created QA systems,
images of the production systems, to test SP2 on. You might have also
checked with the application vendors to determine if their applications
were SP2 compatible.

I never used the word "seasoned" nor did I imply it. What experience I
have, I have. What I don't have, I don't. I think it's pretty immaterial
to an internet chat board because anything I say is non-verifiable anyway.
I've run in to too many liars and fakes on the WWW to even consider worrying
about it anymore.

As for testing, you are absolutely right. In hindsight, I absolutely should
have run through a full series of tests and dry runs. Most of my vendors
*assumed* (this I found out later) their products would work with SP2. I was
busy and ran some simple tests and it all seemed to work. I mean, this is a
MS service pack, right? We can install it and look at it later because there
are usually so few problems with MS updates. Hey, we learn from our mistakes
and that is what I am still in the process of doing.



I got news for you, even using OO and others, there are few open source
products that come close to those offered by MS, and I've run them all,
and I still find myself using MS based products most of the time. If there
was no need to run Office on Linux CrossOver would not have been created
(and it's a commercial application).


I am aware of the limitations. My graphics people all run Macs anyway. My
sales,newsroom, photogs, editors, producers, dept heads, etc all need basic
systems that can be Windows, Mac, or open source and is all up to personal
preference and availability. The only real "need" I have for Windows boxes
are my video servers such as Chyron and a couple other proprietary systems
that won't run on O-S stuff.


I run an IT company and have designed solutions on every platform, none is
better than any other, and there are always people taking shortcuts with
every platform. No one I know uses FP, and ASP/ASP.Net are still very nice
products. Sure, there are people on both sides that will "hate" one
platform, but serious developers don't have a problem working with any
platform, it's just a tool. You can easily develop non-proprietary sites
with MS Products and solutions, at least any quality developer can. We
have more than 120 web developers, about 10 are platform zealots, the rest
work without concern on any platform.

BUT- to run .asp you need MS products. You can run AMP on anything,
including a windows server. It's a personal philosophy that drives my
zealotry on that one.

Hey dave, read the header of the page again. "Security and Administration"


"Dave" wrote:


"velozoom30" wrote in message
...


"Dave" wrote:


Is this a troll, too? If you don't like what I am saying, I am sure
you
will say yes.

of course not, its an anti-ms rant in a newsgroup that is off topic.


Off topic? How is it off topic? Isn't the topic here to discuss security
and administration of Wiindows boxes? My job is to administer the
computer

no, its to discuss "security administration" not "security and
administration", there are other general groups for misc xp problems. maybe
you should try ..windowsxp.perform_maintain, or
...windowsxp.configuration_manage, or better yet, ..windowsxp.newuser.

If SP-2 "bolluxed up so many systems at my station" what did they have in
common?
Since you have many computers, did you test SP-2 on a small sampling before
installing?
Was all the software and hardware compatible with SP-2 as verified by the
manufacturer?

--
Jupiter Jones [MVP]
http://www3.telus.net/dandemar
In memory of our dear friend, MVP Alex Nichol
http://www.dts-l.org


"velozoom30" wrote in message
...
Thanks to Microsoft's WindowsXP SP2, I have finally made the move to open
source applications. I've wanted to make the move for some time but some
laziness on my part has delayed me. Thanks, Billy, for pushing out the
SP2
and specifically the security center because that horrid piece of
programming
(I call SP2 the new WinME) finally made me so angry and frustrated with
you
and your company that I built up a Linux box at home and will soon be
migrating all of my personal equipment over to the Penguin. If I am
browsing
and come across some content that will only work in your non-W3c standards
compliant browser, I refuse to view it. DId you notice that FireFox 1.0
was
downloaded over a million times the first DAY it was available?
Hallelujiah!


I am the systems administrator at a television station and so am used to
dealing with new technology. I have never had as many problems with a
single
piece of software (and let me tell you, video-editing, TV production, and
graphics software can be extremely touchy and hard to work with) as I have
with SP2. It has bolluxed up so many systems at my station, rendering
some
applications totally unusable, that I have removed it from every machine
I
have. I've talked to the administration and we are looking into moving
away
from all MS products and following the growing trend of dismantling our
Windows infrastructure.

I truly hope that the recent trend in computing to move away from the
monopolistic domination of MS is but the first scratchings of the
proverbial
writing on the wall that will soon say that MS is on its way out. Maybe
it
won't come soon, certainly not soon enough for any thinking and rational
IT
person, but I think it is coming and on that day I will rejoice.

Thanks, again, Billy. SP2 did it's job well enough for me.

velozoom30 wrote:
|| I mean, this is a MS service pack, right?

Umm no. Not in the sense that previous service packs were. SP2 re-wrote HUGE
chunks of XP code, some would say that it almost made XP into a new OS.....

--
Interim Systems and Management Accounting
Gordon Burgess-Parker
Director
www.gbpcomputing.co.uk

All this said:

X-Newsreader: Microsoft CDO for Windows 2000
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Priority: normal
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And you moved on to linux... B.S.

If you a "now" linux users how to you do some things such as check you
systems name , memory, cpu, pci ports from the shell.