megamanXplosion's Profile

  • Jul 30, 2005
  • 11
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Latest comments made by: megamanXplosion

  • Serenak: NT4? lol, you're a bit behind the times buddy (almost a decade, in fact.) Windows XP was on NT 5.1 and Windows Server 2003 was on NT 5.2. Longhorn is being built off of Windows Server 2003 so it will probably be using NT 5.2 or a newer version.
    megamanXplosion had this to say on Jul 05, 2005 Posts: 11
    How Microsoft Will Die
  • [i]"gosh megaman that IS the very model of simplicity. A quick trip to microsofts website, a wait for a CD in the mail, an extra step to instal direct X 9.0c (and to think I was fond of DirectX 9.0b). Plus the abiltiy to slipstream! My oh my, you’re absolutley right, Macs just can’t compete with that level of ease of use. I, no really, had to click three of four times to upgrade to TIger. Three or four clicks, man apple is asking a lot from their users."[/i] First of all, where did I say this made Windows easier to use than a Mac? That's right, I did not say such a thing. I suppose it is rather easy to topple an argument you pulled from thin air - that's a logical fallacy. You used several forms of logical fallacies in your post: ad hominem (trying to attack my credibility), ad populum (fanboyism), red herring (changing the subject with a completely irrelevant argument), and straw man (misrepresenting my position to create an argument to easily topple.) If you are going to engage in an argument, at least make sure you come off with a tad bit of credibility. Second, slipstreaming is completely unnecessary for those who simply want to upgrade one machine or two. Slipstreaming makes it easier to install an up-to-date version of Windows on a whole network of computers and have it automatically install applications the network administrator wants to see on every computer (anti-virus, anti-spyware, favorite web browser, software that relates to the jobs of the people, etc.) Slipstreaming is completely [i]optional[/i] and is intended for mass-installation procedures. Third, upgrading to XP SP2 only requires about 4 clicks as well (double-click to open, a few clicks to accept the license agreement and everything else a user does during a normal software installation.) You can download SP2 and DirectX 9.0c from their website if you want to download it (that's a LOT of downloading for someone on a 56k and doesn't want to tie up the phone line for hours.), ordering the update CD is unnecessary - it's just nice to have laying around.
    megamanXplosion had this to say on Jul 05, 2005 Posts: 11
    How Microsoft Will Die
  • I agree with TaiyedMan, you should not install XP without the second service pack handy. It solves a LOT of potential problems. Last time I checked, Microsoft allowed people to order, completely free with no shipping charges, a CD with SP2 plus all of the patches up to the day the CD was made. Do a search on the Microsoft site and see if you can find the order form. The CD also comes with Direct X 9.0c that can be installed with the click of a button. If you already have service pack 2, you can [url=http://www.msfn.org/articles.php?action=show&showarticle=49]Slipstream[/url] the package into a Windows CD and burn it off so you can install Windows XP SP2 directly instead of upgrading afterwards and having to stay offline while you do. If you want to get a little fancy, you can also slipstream individual applications and hotfixes onto your custom XP CD, using the program nLite they mention in the article above. For example, you can have Windows automatically install your anti-virus solution.
    megamanXplosion had this to say on Jul 04, 2005 Posts: 11
    How Microsoft Will Die
  • [i]"And another thing. I interpret from above that you don’t run anti-spyware (correct me if I am wrong, but you say you only run AVG and nothing else). How do you know that you don’t have spyware if you are not running the software to detect it? Is there another way of knowing? If there is I would like to know."[/i] It does seem like a strange comment to make. I know I'm spyware-free because I have Spybot Search & Destroy, Microsoft Anti-Spyware, Adaware, and my anti-virus solution (Kapsersky Anti-Virus) scans spyware too. Of course, I'm a very anal person and going to that extreme really isn't necessary. Anyways, I fail to see how you can claim you're spyware-free if you do not have an anti-spyware tool (unless AVG started removing spyware since I last checked.) [i]"If you are able to do very little maintenance on your XP and still have a great system then that is fantastic. I would also love to know how to do that auto maintenance that MegamanXplosion does to save me time."[/i] http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=15600170 Read that article and you'll have a good idea how to keep Windows maintained without putting in extraneous effort. Don't be afraid to break away and do things that weren't mentioned in the article (trigger your anti-spyware solutions.) Feel free to ask any questions you might have. [i]"When you have my experience and the experience of those around me along with the overseeing of product deployment/support on 5000 plus machines (active and not counting the countless machines/networks and installs since Ethernet came into being) across dozens of networks both small and large of which 2/3rds are Windows based and of those half are on Xtra Pain and the other half on 98 with a few on Win2K (the real world has installed less than 50% of their boxes with XP and the majority of the rest of are still running 98 or 2K and in my world you have to deal with it all. It all has to work, period)...then and only then will you have the real world, hands on, case histories and examples of Windows behavior and knowledge to make the observations based on what really happens in the business world not just Mom or the IT guy at school or your friend down the street with his Windows box or the the company with the 15 computer WinXP network over on Clark Street."[/i] I thought our debate was about how good the latest (XP) and newest (LH) consumer-versions of Windows was, not previous versions. I could easily say that all of the machines I have OS9 on run unreliably, but what would that prove? It seems to me that you are hell-bent determined to prove that Windows is a peice of junk even though you know the problem is with the IT management your clients dragged in. [i]"Now, with all of that in mind, if any or all of those security/functionality problems were present with OS X then I would be stating those issues as well. But they are not. That is the reality. Not FUD. FUD by it’s very perspective/definition is based on lies and half truths...not the truth."[/i] FUD is: fear, uncertainty, and doubt. That sounds like the same things you try to get across in every response you've made (go back and read your posts, this is the pattern: I'm a professional and here's my resume, and I think Micro$oft Windoze sucks, my company avoids it like the plague so you should too!)
    megamanXplosion had this to say on Jul 04, 2005 Posts: 11
    How Microsoft Will Die
  • ^ "besides installing bad hardware drivers" -- and that only requires an upgrade installation, not a clean one. There is absolutely no reason to perform a clean installation of XP.
    megamanXplosion had this to say on Jul 03, 2005 Posts: 11
    How Microsoft Will Die
  • "And MS-DOS, DOS, whatever, is still there. I could care less about 16, 32 or 64 bit...it is there. The back door is there and the crackers are still going through it. End of story." 1. The hacker would need to get through the firewall first. This is practically impossible. 2. The hacker would need administrator privileges to do anything harmful with MS-DOS. Assuming that you are even remotely computer-literate, you will not be running Windows with the administrator account and will have a strong password applied to it. Not only is getting access to the computer near impossible, but even if they get that far it is near impossible to gain administrator privileges. 3. If the hacker actually had administrator privileges, MS-DOS doesn't even need to be touched because the hacker has complete control over the system anyways. I'm sorry but if anyone is actually experiencing hacks through MS-DOS then you have an idiot savant for a hacker and vegetable for an end user whose brain is so small it risks imploding in on itself. I call your bluff. "BSOD" Bull. Windows XP does NOT have BSODs, they restart themselves. Anything similar to a BSOD is from the computer's BIOS which means that it is a hardware problem and can occur on any computer regardless of operating system. "Freeze ups and lock ups" My computer never freezes. Nor does my parents or sister's. The only "lock ups" I experience are when I explicitly lock the computer using the Windows+L keyboard combination. "Multiple daily machine reboots" Sounds like bad hardware drivers to me. I've only had Windows XP reboot one time because of an error and that was because a stick of RAM died (which is when BIOS gave me the BSOD), replaced the RAM and everything was back to normal again. "Directory/Registry failures" Never experienced this either. "Application incompatabilities" Incompatibilities with what? The only program I had an incompatibility with was around the first few weeks of XP's release and it was a game that was later patched. All of the important software was patched months in advanced. "DLL failures" You must be deleting files you shouldn't have been deleting. "An average of 9 clean OS installs per year (PC Magazine annual survey)." PC Magazine's readers are typically anal. My XP Pro box, my parents' XP Pro box, and my sister's XP Home box, have NEVER been reinstalled and they all run as good now as they did years ago. The computer labs at my school (cisco lab, 2 public computer labs, and 3 class-only labs totaling around 100 computers) have never been reformatted either and they run nicely too (I know this because my Cisco teacher was also the IT guy who maintained the computers.) There's no reason to reinstall Windows besides installing bad hardware drivers.
    megamanXplosion had this to say on Jul 03, 2005 Posts: 11
    How Microsoft Will Die
  • "BTW, Megaman...MS-DOS is still there. And anyone or anything that tells you any different either doesn’t know what they are talking about or they are lying. I wonder if M$ has ever lied to their customers or their OEMs.......nah!" Yes, MS-DOS is still present but is obsolete. It really doesn't serve any purpose in Windows XP for 99.999% of users. The remaining 0.001% are the 16-bit application lovers. It is a backwards-compatibility feature, nothing more. And, as Ster rightfully pointed out, FileVault does not do full volume encryption. If you were to sell a Mac then there is a good chance that someone could recover data you would not want them to have. Credit card numbers, telephone numbers, tax reports, social security numbers, passwords, street addresses, etc. are able to be recovered if they have not been securely wiped from the machine using a psuedo-random 0-rewrite scheme. Full volume encryption totally removes the possibility of that information being recovered by a malicious person. In my honest opinion, that [i]is[/i] a feature to be envious of.
    megamanXplosion had this to say on Jul 03, 2005 Posts: 11
    How Microsoft Will Die
  • "I did not compare Mac virus percentages to marketshare." I know you didn't. I was referring to dickrichards2000. "I would suggest you study up on the history of the development of UNIX all of the way back to the Bell Labs over fifty years ago. It was designed to be shared from day one. MS-DOS was never intended to be shared. Retro engineering very rarely works and certainly hasn’t for M$." I stated that Mac users "may" feel envious of Longhorn's security enhancements like full volume encryption. And that is an "opinion." Why wouldn't Mac users want full volume encryption? I would also suggest that you read up on Windows itself. MS-DOS was made obsolete with Windows XP - several years ago.
    megamanXplosion had this to say on Jul 03, 2005 Posts: 11
    How Microsoft Will Die
  • I did not mean to imply that users who cannot do batch scripting are clueless. I was mainly talking about the "someone" who works at Intel. How others seemed to have gotten involved was not intentional, just bad wording. I apologize. Should operating systems maintain themselves in a more intuitive manner? Absolutely. Microsoft has realized this, and that's why they're working on a product called OneCare (that is already in beta testing.) One care automatically defragments the computer, runs disk cleanup, backs up the computer to CD/DVD or another hard drive, protects against spyware, protects against viruses, etc. without the user having to do anything. A good quote in retrospect: "A small step for Microsoft, a giant leap for their users." I would have to disagree with your comment about Mac's virus problem being equal to their marketshare. On the contrary, its much smaller because its security is inherently superior to Windows XP. For example, Macs use a least-privilege user access system while Windows XP typically gives full administrator privileges (assuming the user is under an administrator account, which the majority erroneously are.) That is a massive different in security policies! Longhorn's security has been greatly enhanced though. Longhorn has adopted the least-privilege idea of computing, full volume encryption (I don't think Mac has this, correct me if I'm wrong), two-way firewall, more people will have 64-bit processors with data-execution prevention enabled by default (less buffer overflows,) anti-spyware protection will be included by default (from what I've heard), etc. Longhorn has seen a massive improvement in privacy and security. From what I seen, Mac users may feel envious of Longhorn's security when it's released. That's just an opinion though, so please do not stab me in the eye. Anyways, if all things go as planned, Longhorn's maintenance will be transparent to the user. Basic upkeep, privacy, security, etc. will be handled by the operating system instead of relying on the user. My guess is that Longhorn will be the most successful operating system ever released by Microsoft :)
    megamanXplosion had this to say on Jul 03, 2005 Posts: 11
    How Microsoft Will Die
  • "Someone high up in Intel was quoted as saying that he had to spend an hour each weekend removing spyware from his daughter’s PC. Is that a good use of time? In my opinion, no, but on a PC this maintenance must be done otherwise the whole system will break down." If that "someone" actually knew anything about computers he would know that batch scripting (.bat files) and the task scheduler can solve the problem completely, in a single hour. My PC doesn't require active maintenance, it heals itself while I sleep. This is what my computer does at 3 AM in the morning, once a week... 1. Wakes up from power-saving mode 2. Opens command prompt (batch script) 3. Run Disk Cleanup on all drives 4. Delete cache and history from browsers (Opera and Firefox) 5. Launch Spybot Search & Destroy (which automatically updates itself, scans for problems, fixes them, reapplies the immunity feature if necessary, and closes itself. 6. Defragments all of the drives (except the partitions for my swap file and my Photoshop scratch file) 7. Creates a backup of the system on another partition. 8. Closes itself. 9. Goes back into power-saving mode 20 minutes after. There is absolutely no need to maintain a computer, by hand, an hour each week. Whoever does that is clueless about computers, and certainly shouldn't be employed at Intel.
    megamanXplosion had this to say on Jul 03, 2005 Posts: 11
    How Microsoft Will Die
  • WinFS: Depending on how you use the word "cut," you could be wrong or right. WinFS has been delayed but will still be downloadable from their web site shortly after Longhorn is released. It seems to me that you are implying that they've stopped development on it; that would be wrong. .NET Framework: This has not been cut, it is still a major part of Longhorn. Not only is it a major part of Longhorn but also coincides with the release and introduction of Microsoft Visual Studio and XAML. Monad: This has not been cut either. Monad has just entered development and will be introduced in Longhorn. They have not cut it back, despite what many rumor mills (read: news sites) claim. Windows users should feel greatful that Microsoft even decided to ship a portion of it in Longhorn, considering it wasn't intended for Longhorn itself. Integrated Search: This has not been cut either. Seriously, do you think they would cut a feature they've already created and released (yes, Windows XP has integrated searching)? Longhorn is simply building on the foundation that is already there by improving performance and tidying up the interface. There's absolutely nothing there to cut, so I fail to see how such a statement could be made. Avalon and Indigo: These are still major parts of Longhorn. WinFX (read: .NET framework) and XAML are built around Avalon and Indigo. This has not been cut, dropped, delayed, or anything else that could possibly be said with a negative intent. IE7: I agree with you here. The interface improvements to Internet Explorer 7 are nice, but it's nothing to make me board the Internet Explorer Love Boat. That's for certain. Hopefully they will improve their standards compliance beyond the show-stopper bugs and work to make the show better, so to speak. Internet Explorer has a very long way to go to reach the superiority of Safari, Firefox, or Opera (and any other browser I don't feel like mentioning.) This article/entry was built on a foundation of incorrect information. Once put into perspective, the argument collapses and implodes upon itself. Chris Howard, first reply to this entry, has the right idea. Microsoft are doing great.
    megamanXplosion had this to say on Jul 03, 2005 Posts: 11
    How Microsoft Will Die