...and the ancient Romans (exposure of deformed babies) and probably most of ancient indo-european societies as well. It simply makes sense in a situation where it is very expensive (for the parents and the rest of society) to support offspring that are not potentially as capable as their parents. If a child is born without legs in a society that is almost entirely dependent on farming and his parents are farmers, the parents cannot let the child live and be using resources competitively with other humans (and other species).
Myth: Windows NT outperforms all other operating systems
Reality: Windows NT only outperforms all other operating systems if MS is allowed to misconfigure the competition and avail themselves of technical support that no MS customer would have. In fact NT hasn't really been shown to outperform anything any way. What does outperform mean by the way?:)
Myth: Windows NT is a very reliable operating system.
Reality: Depends on how you shake "very" but yes it is realiable in staying up... if you don't run too many applications at one time, don't install anything that isn't MS-certified and do NOT tweak anything except in MS recommended ways (with a little gui box to go with it). But as that is usually good enough for some people, this is a good definition of very.
Myth: MS Windows NT delivers a great OS at a great price.
Reality: $4000 for 1 server and 10 workstation licenses? Come on, you gotta be kidding! (I know that number isn't quite right but it *is* in the thousands). Put in the hardware and user software packages and that's a bundle. I don't know about you, but if the OS alone costs me into the thousands, it better be as bug-free and secure as possible... or at least bug fixes had better be timely and actually work. Oh yeah, add in support and this could really be a lot of money. "Now which button should I press to get to the do-hickey thing that'll change this access permission?" the customer says. "Press the one that says 'XXX'" says the customer service rep. "It didn't work." "Oh, I mean 'YYY'." "That didn't work either." Two hours later: "I'm glad you fixed my problem," says the customer and the rep says "I'm glad we did too. Your bill is in the mail." "How much was it, by the way?" The rep tells him and the customer drops dead.:)
Oh and the "certified engineers" business is a load of hoooo-ey. Who cares if there exist well-trained lemming/sloths who paid thru the nose to learn to service my NT box when I could easily learn MYSELF how to service my UNIX/BSD/LINUX/etc. box?
Myth: Windows NT has passed US gov't certification for security.
Reality: Uh, not to burst anyone's bubble but I think only Win NT 3.5 got C2 certification and *that* had to be with the box not connected to any other computer (no internet boys!) The others may have gotten the British Gov't's okay, but it's news to me.
Myth: Windows NT security fixes are easy while the competitions are really hard to understand.
Reality: MS publishes incorrect security fixes and sometimes takes weeks after and exploit is published to fix the bug and that's good? Oh, and a simple rpm -Uvh is hard?
Myth: Windows NT is a really intuitive system and so is a good desktop system.
Reality: Okay, personal story boys: When my family first got a Windows 95 machine, I was in high school. I had experience with apples and dos (and a funny little Tandy that I programmed basic on when I was very little). We even bought a thick $30 Que book on using Windows 95. It still took me a long time to figure out how to do simple things like rearrange my menus on the start bar -- and I *never* got to rearrange my desktop pop-up menu. Not to mention I didn't understand the utility of the start bar for a long time (like clicking on minimized programs to bring them up or to switch between programs.) Windows NT user interface is much the same, so the comparison is valid. My point is not that the Windows UI is bad, it is that it is only "intuitive" because I've used it so much. It has been no more intuitive for me than the default Red Hat 6.0 window manager and default bars/menus/etc. I have a feeling that the idea that Windows is intuitive is simply because so many people have used it for so long that they don't realize the trouble they had when they first started with Windows (3.0, 95, etc).
Myth: Windows has so many good applications that it makes it the only choice.
Reality: Yes there are a lot of applications for Windows NT. Many of them are good or at least acceptable. But they generally cost a hell of a lot of money. MS Office costs at least $100 (if you are a student). Corel/WordPerfect may be cheaper, but it probably isn't much cheaper for business licenses. Development environments can cost a lot more (if you actually want to be able to distribute the end product, which the student licenses from MS forbid --- I don't know about Borland or the others). I'm usually happy with a text editor and a command line compiler. That's all I need or want, so I usually end up treating a MS Visual X as a text editor that happens to have the compile command on a menu. I know it's silly, but when you don't need the whole shebang, IDE's for Windows are just too much and the ported GNU tools just don't work too well on Windows (besides, DOS command line sucks). So why should someone who really only needs a text editor and e-mail and a web browsers and a command line compiler and a few games use Win NT? As that is about what most non-computer people I know need (minus the compiler:) ).
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...and the ancient Romans (exposure of deformed babies) and probably most of ancient indo-european societies as well. It simply makes sense in a situation where it is very expensive (for the parents and the rest of society) to support offspring that are not potentially as capable as their parents. If a child is born without legs in a society that is almost entirely dependent on farming and his parents are farmers, the parents cannot let the child live and be using resources competitively with other humans (and other species).
Rachael
Thanks!
Thanks!
MS Windows NT Myths
:)
... if you don't run too many applications at one time, don't install anything that isn't MS-certified and do NOT tweak anything except in MS recommended ways (with a little gui box to go with it). But as that is usually good enough for some people, this is a good definition of very.
... or at least bug fixes had better be timely and actually work. Oh yeah, add in support :)
:) ).
:) )
Myth: Windows NT outperforms all other operating systems
Reality: Windows NT only outperforms all other operating systems if MS is allowed to misconfigure the competition and avail themselves of technical support that no MS customer would have. In fact NT hasn't really been shown to outperform anything any way. What does outperform mean by the way?
Myth: Windows NT is a very reliable operating system.
Reality: Depends on how you shake "very" but yes it is realiable in staying up
Myth: MS Windows NT delivers a great OS at a great price.
Reality: $4000 for 1 server and 10 workstation licenses? Come on, you gotta be kidding! (I know that number isn't quite right but it *is* in the thousands). Put in the hardware and user software packages and that's a bundle. I don't know about you, but if the OS alone costs me into the thousands, it better be as bug-free and secure as possible
and this could really be a lot of money. "Now which button should I press to get to the do-hickey thing that'll change this access permission?" the customer says. "Press the one that says 'XXX'" says the customer service rep. "It didn't work." "Oh, I mean 'YYY'." "That didn't work either." Two hours later: "I'm glad you fixed my problem," says the customer and the rep says "I'm glad we did too. Your bill is in the mail." "How much was it, by the way?" The rep tells him and the customer drops dead.
Oh and the "certified engineers" business is a load of hoooo-ey. Who cares if there exist well-trained lemming/sloths who paid thru the nose
to learn to service my NT box when I could easily learn MYSELF how to service my UNIX/BSD/LINUX/etc. box?
Myth: Windows NT has passed US gov't certification for security.
Reality: Uh, not to burst anyone's bubble but I think only Win NT 3.5 got C2 certification and *that* had to be with the box not connected to any other computer (no internet boys!) The others may have gotten the British Gov't's okay, but it's news to me.
Myth: Windows NT security fixes are easy while the competitions are really hard to understand.
Reality: MS publishes incorrect security fixes and sometimes takes weeks after and exploit is published to fix the bug and that's good? Oh, and a simple rpm -Uvh is hard?
Myth: Windows NT is a really intuitive system and so is a good desktop system.
Reality: Okay, personal story boys: When my family first got a Windows 95 machine, I was in high school. I had experience with apples and dos (and a funny little Tandy that I programmed basic on when I was very little). We even bought a thick $30 Que book on using Windows 95. It still took me a long time to figure out how to do simple things like rearrange my menus on the start bar -- and I *never* got to rearrange my desktop pop-up menu. Not to mention I didn't understand the utility of the start bar for a long time (like clicking on minimized programs to bring them up or to switch between programs.) Windows NT user interface is much the same, so the comparison is
valid. My point is not that the Windows UI is bad, it is that it is only "intuitive" because I've used it so much. It has been no more intuitive for me than the default Red Hat 6.0 window manager and default bars/menus/etc. I have a feeling that the idea that Windows is intuitive is simply because so many people have used it for so long that they don't realize the trouble they had when they first started with Windows (3.0, 95, etc).
Myth: Windows has so many good applications that it makes it the only choice.
Reality: Yes there are a lot of applications for Windows NT. Many of them are good or at least acceptable. But they generally cost a hell of a lot of money. MS Office costs at least $100 (if you are a student). Corel/WordPerfect may be cheaper, but it probably isn't much cheaper for business licenses. Development environments can cost a lot more (if you actually want to be able to distribute the end product, which the student licenses from MS forbid --- I don't know about Borland or the others). I'm usually happy with a text editor and a command line compiler. That's all I need or want, so I usually end up treating a MS Visual X as a text editor that happens to have the compile command on a menu. I know it's silly, but when you don't need the whole shebang, IDE's for Windows are just too much and the ported GNU tools just don't work too well on Windows (besides, DOS command line sucks). So why should someone who really only needs a text editor and e-mail and a web browsers and a command line compiler and a few games use Win NT? As that is about what most non-computer people I know need
(minus the compiler
Rachael
(This is my first ever post, so be gentle