Well, I'm just a crufty old troglodyte who has managed nothing but MVS, RSX, VMS, RT-11 OSes and numerous Windows viruses, and who has used and abused IBM 1130, S/3, S/360, NCR C-100, Burroughs B and L-series systems as well as PDP, VAXen, Alpha, and military black box systems since 1970, so I guess I'm not well equipped to respond.
But let me put on my baseball cap (backwards, of course) and give it a try.
1) VMS is pretty darned easy to learn and to manage. I wrote a best-selling user guide on the OS less than a year after first encountering a VMS system. Compate VMS staffing requirements with those of mainframes and big Windows installations.
2) The privileges and quotas which caused you so much grief are intrinsic to the security of the OS. How many Critical Updates have been issued for VMS in the past month? How many VMS systems have been brought down by bugs, worms, viruses, hackers, and other vermin in the past month? How often do you see a BSOD on VMS?
3) Check out the CERT advisories and compare the number issued for VMS with the number issued for Windoze and the plethora of Unixes.
Yep, if you have a Wintel box, you don't have to go on your knees and beg for indulgence from a prick every couple of weeks to be able to be able to get anything done on your computer. Neither does anyone who decides to hack your system!
IMHO AOL doth sucketh mightily. The idea of paying $23.95 a month to be indundated with ads and pop-ups is not at all appealing to me, nor is the concept of being essentially restricted to the AOL reservation.
As for the decline in AOL's subscriber base, there could be some book-cooking going on. Are the folks who use their 1,500 free hours in one month and then quit considered to be subscribers?
If so, there's an awful lot of churn, and it would be very difficult to determine the size of the real subscriber base.
cheers,
Milford Poltroon
PS-- Yeah, I went to a Publik Skool (More Science High, of course) so I'm not too bright, but I do know that there are 168 hours in a week. So how does one use 1,500--or even 750--hours in a month?
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Well, I'm just a crufty old troglodyte who has managed nothing but MVS, RSX, VMS, RT-11 OSes and numerous Windows viruses, and who has used and abused IBM 1130, S/3, S/360, NCR C-100, Burroughs B and L-series systems as well as PDP, VAXen, Alpha, and military black box systems since 1970, so I guess I'm not well equipped to respond. But let me put on my baseball cap (backwards, of course) and give it a try. 1) VMS is pretty darned easy to learn and to manage. I wrote a best-selling user guide on the OS less than a year after first encountering a VMS system. Compate VMS staffing requirements with those of mainframes and big Windows installations. 2) The privileges and quotas which caused you so much grief are intrinsic to the security of the OS. How many Critical Updates have been issued for VMS in the past month? How many VMS systems have been brought down by bugs, worms, viruses, hackers, and other vermin in the past month? How often do you see a BSOD on VMS? 3) Check out the CERT advisories and compare the number issued for VMS with the number issued for Windoze and the plethora of Unixes. Yep, if you have a Wintel box, you don't have to go on your knees and beg for indulgence from a prick every couple of weeks to be able to be able to get anything done on your computer. Neither does anyone who decides to hack your system!
IMHO AOL doth sucketh mightily. The idea of paying $23.95 a month to be indundated with ads and pop-ups is not at all appealing to me, nor is the concept of being essentially restricted to the AOL reservation. As for the decline in AOL's subscriber base, there could be some book-cooking going on. Are the folks who use their 1,500 free hours in one month and then quit considered to be subscribers? If so, there's an awful lot of churn, and it would be very difficult to determine the size of the real subscriber base. cheers, Milford Poltroon PS-- Yeah, I went to a Publik Skool (More Science High, of course) so I'm not too bright, but I do know that there are 168 hours in a week. So how does one use 1,500--or even 750--hours in a month?
Yup, Marvel will run Linux. As well as OpenVMS and Tru64 UNIX.