beware of the updates you install

[D. Peter Maus]

On 11/7/13 14:01 , William Sommerwerck wrote:

"sctvguy1" wrote in message news:l5gp4p$9m8$2@dont-email.me...

I dropped Windows years ago. Run Linux. No problems.

Does Linux run Word? Ventura? Photoshop? Interface with my AIBO? LEGOs?
Canon and Epson scanners?

Over the years, I have had little trouble with Windows. Contrary to what
some people might think, it is not scarier than blueberry pancakes.

I had an uncle killed by blueberry pancakes.

 

[Adrian C]

On 07/11/2013 16:08, jurb6006@gmail.com wrote:

I update nothing, period.

Lemme tellya a little story that happened to me recently.

<snip>

Uninstall Java or block it from running inside the browser. Unpatched
it's dangerous and you very probably don't need it for anything critical
anyway.

Any other security measures are not wholy needed, the original point of
the internet was to allow folks to freely share information without
hinderance. You should allow open access to all (guest account, public
user group etc...), and willingly accept presents left. Don't leave
things on your machine to take if these things are valuable to you, and
don't configure your machine in such a way that it would be an
uncontrollable nuisance to others.

Now the $64,000 question is - can you really do the above trustily with
Microsoft software, especially with outdated unpatched items? I think not.

In two words - buffer overrun. In one word. Shite.

--
Adrian C

 

[hank alrich]

D. Peter Maus <dpetermaus@att.net> wrote:

On 11/7/13 14:01 , William Sommerwerck wrote:
"sctvguy1" wrote in message news:l5gp4p$9m8$2@dont-email.me...

I dropped Windows years ago. Run Linux. No problems.

Does Linux run Word? Ventura? Photoshop? Interface with my AIBO? LEGOs?
Canon and Epson scanners?

Over the years, I have had little trouble with Windows. Contrary to what
some people might think, it is not scarier than blueberry pancakes.



I had an uncle killed by blueberry pancakes.

It was the antioxidants.

--
shut up and play your guitar * HankAlrich.Com
HankandShaidriMusic.Com
YouTube.Com/WalkinayMusic

 

[Mike McGinn]

On 2013-11-08, dave <ricketzz@earthlink.net> wrote:

On 11/07/2013 07:39 PM, Mike McGinn wrote:
On 2013-11-07, Jeff Henig <yomama@yomama.com> wrote:
sctvguy1 <sctvguy1@invalid.net> wrote:
On Fri, 08 Nov 2013 09:12:09 +1300, geoff wrote:

sctvguy1 wrote:

I dropped Windows years ago. Run Linux. No problems.

I'm sure if OP had let things do themselves without interference he
wouldn't had had the slight 15 minute inconvenience that he he. Hardly
a reason to ditch an OS and all the applications he knows and loves ....

geoff

The only people who seem to love Windows, are techs who make money
"fixing" problems and re-installing everything when it gets infected.

"Love"?

Sorry, we don't all sexualize our digits.

Personally, I use what I'm used to using because I want to make music, not
learn another OS that might or might not work for what I need.


I have been using Linux almost exclusively for ten years. I prefer it,
it works well for me. I do a lot of software development and it is well
suited for that. I do have Windows and Linux machines I deal with at
work. Updates are much simpler on Linux than Windows. I like that it is
very gard to get a virus in Linux unless you do something really stupid.

Having said that, I think people should use what they like and what
suits them. I think arguing about operating systems is as pointless as
arguing over religion.

Can we get back to radios now? I have an old Tek 453 on the getting some
power supply work. Those are tight little units, but I like them. They
are funky. It is amazing how they crammed so much performance in a small
package in 1966. I'll be looking for a 454 when this is done.

For me that is a lot of the charm of working on old stuff. I realized it
as a teen back in the early '70s when the Staten Island Historical
Society let me work on their antique radio collection. It is amazing
what they did with what they had.



I love all the shiny gold switches etc. inside Teks.

and the gold on the circuit boards, the ceramic strips, the laced wiring
harnesess and that "built to lst feel."

--
Mike McGinn KD2CNU
"More kidneys than eyes."

 

[geoff]

Scott Dorsey wrote:

William Sommerwerck <grizzledgeezer@comcast.net> wrote:
If Windows (and to a lesser degree, the Mac OS) didn't exist, there
would likely be a plethora of operating systems, and people would be
complaining "Why can't we have a single standard?".

And this was what it was like in the seventies and eighties. And,
overall it was a good thing because it encouraged people to make
their applications portable.

I think having a heterogeneous environment is a good thing for a lot
of different reasons, not just because it makes malware propagation
more difficult but also because it forces people to think about the
compromises being made in their implementations.

It also means that people developing more complex systems based
around a computer (like a DAW for instance) have more choices. Often
those systems have requirements which are very different than those
of "general purpose" computing appliances and it is good to have such
choices available when they are needed.
--scott

\
It used to be necessary to optimise this and that, but now with the extra
cpu power available I don't dick with things, and simply install all
suggested updates. And guess what - zero problems for years now .


geoff

 

[Les Cargill]

dave wrote:

On 11/07/2013 07:35 PM, Trevor wrote:


Nope, not the whole world, but 90% makes for a fair majority. Just as
English is the default language on the internet, many people can and do
choose to stick with what they know instead. And since English is not the
first language of 90% of computer users, a far better case can be made
for
some people using another one! Doesn't mean you have to learn it though.
Thankfully or the whole world would do nothing but learn dozens of
languages. Same goes for companies who choose to support only the
majority
operating systems, and users who prefer a mainstream "standard".

Trevor.


How do you justify paying $200 for a computer operating system that does
nothing but send you places that ask for money? The Windows world is
like North Las Vegas. It is crass, commercial and everyone has to get
their hands dirty.

I like commercial myself. Hourses for courses...


I have a netbook with XP that I need to talk to my

iPod. Next year I plan to buy a Windows7 refurb from a Windows reseller.
They go for between $50 and a $100 n eBay, less than half what a
builder pays for the OS alone. This is only so I can run the Apple crap
and maybe some LT spice. My main surfing machine and my ham radio
machines are 100% open source and commercial free..

Two things:

https://www.virtualbox.org/

and
http://www.itdirectdeals.com/product.asp?itemid=318&gclid=CKOrsLWw1roCFUlp7AodQxAAcw

Fiddy-nine bux, baybee! Plus you can get the VM of Win7 perfectly
stable, copy it and always have a place to roll back to. If
the refurb is a better solution then awesome.

You don't even need to burn a DVD - just point Virtualbox at the .iso
and go.

--
Les Cargill

 

[asdf]

http://www.libreoffice.org/

Lots of formats supported natively, both read and write of course.

 

[Jason]

On Fri, 08 Nov 2013 09:19:21 -0800 "dave" <ricketzz@earthlink.net> wrote
in article <z8ydncGpdfWEgODPnZ2dnUVZ_oWdnZ2d@earthlink.com>

Mac OSX and Linux are cousins (both derived from from AT&T Unix).
Windows is based on patching and quilting and something called "Quick
and Dirty Operating System".

The fastest computers on earth all run Linux.

Mac OSX was derived from Berkeley Unix. Linux was written from the ground
up.

 

[William Sommerwerck]

"geoff" wrote in message
news:SMedndwGxImL5eDPnZ2dnUVZ_oydnZ2d@giganews.com...

It used to be necessary to optimise this and that, but now
with the extra cpu power available I don't dick with things...

When I talk about optimization, I mean in terms of how you want to use the
computer, and the things necessary to create an appropriate (and safe) working
environment. These vary from user to user.

...and simply install all suggested updates. And guess what --
zero problems for years now.

Well, I had a problem -- and I don't believe it was caused by incomplete
installation of the updates I'd perceived as dangerous.

I could try installing them again, and see what happens, knowing I can almost
certainly reverse the installation. (The worst that could happen is having to
reinstall Office 2000.) But I'm not going to. It isn't worth the trouble.

 

[Leif Neland]

hank alrich forklarede:

D. Peter Maus <dpetermaus@att.net> wrote:

On 11/7/13 14:01 , William Sommerwerck wrote:
"sctvguy1" wrote in message news:l5gp4p$9m8$2@dont-email.me...

I dropped Windows years ago. Run Linux. No problems.

Does Linux run Word? Ventura? Photoshop? Interface with my AIBO? LEGOs?
Canon and Epson scanners?

Over the years, I have had little trouble with Windows. Contrary to what
some people might think, it is not scarier than blueberry pancakes.



I had an uncle killed by blueberry pancakes.

It was the antioxidants.

Or the free radicals.
"Oh James, _do_ be careful"

Leif

--
Husk křrelys bagpĺ, hvis din bilfabrikant har taget den idiotiske
beslutning at undlade det.

 

[Baron]

sctvguy1 Inscribed thus:

On Fri, 08 Nov 2013 09:12:09 +1300, geoff wrote:

sctvguy1 wrote:

I dropped Windows years ago. Run Linux. No problems.

Been running Linux since early 92-93.

I'm sure if OP had let things do themselves without interference he
wouldn't had had the slight 15 minute inconvenience that he he.
Hardly a reason to ditch an OS and all the applications he knows and
loves ....

geoff

The only people who seem to love Windows, are techs who make money
"fixing" problems and re-installing everything when it gets infected.

Very true !

--
Best Regards:
Baron.

 

[Baron]

Jeff Henig Inscribed thus:

Oh hey, I get that. If Linux was what I knew, I'd probably use that,
myself.

Download and burn a live CD and have a play with it...

And the old stuff gets respect from me, for sure. I know that modern
cars are more evolved, but I miss my first car--a 1967 Mustang
fastback. And right now I'd really enjoy foolin' with an old tube
radio for the fun of it.


Sometimes I do miss the tinkering...

--
Best Regards:
Baron.

 

[Baron]

dave Inscribed thus:

On 11/07/2013 12:01 PM, William Sommerwerck wrote:
"sctvguy1" wrote in message news:l5gp4p$9m8$2@dont-email.me...

I dropped Windows years ago. Run Linux. No problems.

Does Linux run Word? Ventura? Photoshop? Interface with my AIBO?
LEGOs? Canon and Epson scanners?

Over the years, I have had little trouble with Windows. Contrary to
what some people might think, it is not scarier than blueberry
pancakes.


Canon has very good Linux support. Do you really need Photoshop?
GIMP works fine for me and the price can't be beat. Linux
productivity apps are as good as they get. You just don't get
DirectX, which pisses me off.

I agree ! You can still play with your Lego toys. But why DirectX ?

--
Best Regards:
Baron.

 

BOTTOM POST QUESTION.

SOMEONE CLAIMED THEY USED TO WORK FOR MICROSOFT, IS IT TRUE THAT AT THEIR CORPORATE OFFICES THEY DID NOT USE WINDOWS ? (they use(d) Linux) ?

Or is that an urban legend ?

Seriously, I heard TWO people tell me that. Is it true, or WAS it ?

 

[Scott Dorsey]

Les Cargill <lcargill99@comcast.com> wrote:

dave wrote:

How do you justify paying $200 for a computer operating system that does
nothing but send you places that ask for money? The Windows world is
like North Las Vegas. It is crass, commercial and everyone has to get
their hands dirty.

I like commercial myself. Hourses for courses...

I like commercial operating systems too, and that is why I am so upset
that Microsoft and their financing model has driven most other commercial
operating systems out of the market.

There's Solaris. And there are some commercial Linux releases like Red
Hat and SuSE that give you commercial-grade support even if they don't
give you commercial-grade product up-front. And there's _sort of_ VMS
for a little while anyway.

But since the demise of BeOS there are NO realtime operating systems
intended for desktop use. There are some linux versions with
"soft-realtime" extensions and there are a lot of embedded system
RTOSes and there's sort of QNX if you can get them to deign to speak
to a mere customer.

But I really would like to see a purpose-built DAW again, on a platform
designed for the job.
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

 

[Les Cargill]

Scott Dorsey wrote:

Les Cargill <lcargill99@comcast.com> wrote:
dave wrote:

How do you justify paying $200 for a computer operating system that does
nothing but send you places that ask for money? The Windows world is
like North Las Vegas. It is crass, commercial and everyone has to get
their hands dirty.

I like commercial myself. Hourses for courses...

I like commercial operating systems too, and that is why I am so upset
that Microsoft and their financing model has driven most other commercial
operating systems out of the market.

There's Solaris.

I was forced back onto that recently. Quite unpleasant. The Linuces are
much more advanced. They were actually going to Linux as the solution
to that.

And there are some commercial Linux releases like Red
Hat and SuSE that give you commercial-grade support even if they don't
give you commercial-grade product up-front.

Dunno what's not "commercial grade" about it; it's fine. The general
package management problem in Linux still persists.

And there's _sort of_ VMS
for a little while anyway.

Not a big fan of VMS.

But since the demise of BeOS there are NO realtime operating systems
intended for desktop use.

Hm. Well, I don't have much trouble with that. For "realtime", we
just write drivers. It's not a desktop, but it could be. All
you really need is one free hardware timer.

The various Atmel sized processors really kind of make a realtime
desktop moot. There's stuff like the Raspberry PI and cubieBoard
that can do all that as well.

It might be prohibitive, but I think you could build a cubieBoard
linux that interfaces to one/any of the USB2.0 interfaces using ALSA .
It has HDMI, so there's your display solution. Just NFS mount a remote
desktop/server/NAS.

If the USB2.0 interface has MIDI, you have a control surface solution.

There are some linux versions with
"soft-realtime" extensions and there are a lot of embedded system
RTOSes and there's sort of QNX if you can get them to deign to speak
to a mere customer.

Since the demise of WindRiver, it's pretty much all been Linux that I
could tell.

But I really would like to see a purpose-built DAW again, on a platform
designed for the job.

There are curious variations on the theme, like standalone VST hosts.

I kinda don't see the point of it. You can
run any of the COTS DAW packages on a stripped-down machine.

And isn't Otari still shipping RADAR?

--scott

--
Les Cargill

 

[William Sommerwerck]

wrote in message news:662faa50-9e4b-4bbd-ab3b-df350052f0a1@googlegroups.com...

SOMEONE CLAIMED THEY USED TO WORK FOR MICROSOFT,
IS IT TRUE THAT AT THEIR CORPORATE OFFICES THEY DID
NOT USE WINDOWS ? (they use(d) Linux) ?
Or is that an urban legend ?
Seriously, I heard TWO people tell me that. Is it true, or WAS it ?

It simply isn't true. The last time I worked there was in 2011, I believe, and
Microsoft used Windows.

 

[Michael Black]

On Sat, 9 Nov 2013, jurb6006@gmail.com wrote:

BOTTOM POST QUESTION.

SOMEONE CLAIMED THEY USED TO WORK FOR MICROSOFT, IS IT TRUE THAT AT THEIR CORPORATE OFFICES THEY DID NOT USE WINDOWS ? (they use(d) Linux) ?

Or is that an urban legend ?

Seriously, I heard TWO people tell me that. Is it true, or WAS it ?

Who knows.

But, don't forget that once upon a time, Microsoft was in the Unix
business. In the early eighties they had their own version, Xenix, and it
was a legit version of Unix, done in conjunction with SCO. You could get
it for Radio Shack's 68000 computer, and for 8086 (I think) computers.

I can certainly seem them using fancier computers for development.

Michael

 

[Side Job Scooter]

I'm so glad I dumped Windows and switched to Linux back in 05.

Scott


On Thu, 07 Nov 2013 03:25:26 -0800, William Sommerwerck wrote:

Most in this group are knowledgeable computer users. But an occasional
reminder to "Beware!" can't hurt.

Some months back I installed the Microsoft compatibility update that
allows Office 2000 programs to read and write XML files (.docs, .xlsx,
etc). (It works fine, by the way.)

The problem is that the new formats appeared with Office 2007. Windows
Update now thought my Office software was the 2007 version. I started
receiving prompts to install security updates for it.

Common sense told me it wouldn't be a good idea to modify Office 2000
programs with Office 2007 updates. So when updates were needed, I
cleared the checkboxes for these. Unfortunately...

Yesterday, I accidentally clicked the wrong button, and they were
installed. It was particularly annoying that repeated clicks on the
"Halt the Update!" button had no effect.

The result was that Word 2000 (and the other Office components, I
assume) were buggered. The Preview display was screwed up, and I got
error messages when I tried to print.

Fortunately, reversing the updates' installation and restarting the
computer fixed the problem. I was out only 15 minutes' inconvenience.

Don't assume factory-recommended updates are appropriate. Look before
you leap, and all those other clichĂŠs.


"We already know the answers -- we just haven't asked the right
questions." -- Edwin Land

 

[William Sommerwerck]

"Side Job Scooter" wrote in message news:9yNfu.165357$9P6.136091@fx22.iad...

> I'm so glad I dumped Windows and switched to Linux back in 05.

My situation has nothing whatever to do with Windows. Or any other operating
system. That should have been clear from what I posted.