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Just curious about the latest episode of the tech show, the "WindowsCrash" episode on 05.11.05.

Warning: pro-windows content below

Does anyone else find this just a bit overdone? I listened to the first ten minutes of the episode, and it was simply unbearable. What's the point? Windows users have some misconceptions? Yeah, we get it. Just my two cents at least. In my opinion, most everyone that listens to this show already understands the concepts involved in open source and the arguments that surround them.

For what its worth, I work on a number of computers on a daily basis. I use a computer with Ubuntu linux, another with Fedora 3, an eMac, and finally a * gasp * windows machine. I love linux because of the things that I can do, and the fact that it takes all of one second to be working in a fully featured command line environment. However, even with all of the advances in linux, I cannot connect to half of the wireless networks my laptop sees. I have a network card that supposedly should work great, but no amount of tinkering will get it to work. With Windows? You guessed it: works perfectly.

I'd like to point out a few of the misconceptions I heard during the first ten minutes of the linux link tech show to show why I'm a little concerned, assuming you've read this far. . .
* Windows crashing
The days of the blue screen have long since passed in my experience. I have been on Windows XP since the day it came out, and the ONLY (read that again ONLY) time I have had a serious crash has been because of hardware malfunction or poorly written drivers. Think Linux has problems getting good drivers written? well so does Windows. As a part time IT support person, I have been to nearly a hundred clients "in the wild" over the last year, all using Windows XP. The ONLY time I've had to get into safe mode was to deal with poorly written drivers. The operating system no longer fights me, which is more than I can say for linux.

* Integration
I heard a few comments mocking the integration Microsoft provides (with Outlook, for example, and for the record, there is a version of Office that does not include Outlook). Does Evolution not provide the same functionality (take, for example, the database Evolution works out of). In fact, don't many people within companies rely on this for day to day usage? This is not unlike the Outlook data stores that are kept on Windows, so I'm failing to see the point here. Outlook express works just as well as any lightweight email client out there.

* Vulnerabilities
Outlook and Outlook express both have had some vulnerabilities, and no one will debate that. Why is that? The answer is simple: market share. Would anyone bother writing a worm that would infect open source email clients? In my opinion, probably not. Outlook (and derivatives) have a FAR larger market share, so they're the primary target. So what will happen when an open source project starts gaining steam and picking up market share? Well, let's look at firefox, arguably the most successful open source project to date. Even with only a 7% market share, they've had no less than three critical bug fixes since their official 1.0 release. In my research, that's more than microsoft during the same time period.

About Windows media player: it sucks, I'll agree with you on that one.

This might not be popular, I might be flamed, and if this is innappropriate let me know. However, open source advocates look a little uneducated at times when making sarcastic remarks about Windows like I heard in the latest tech show.[/i]

jedediah wrote: * Vulnerabilities
Outlook and Outlook express both have had some vulnerabilities, and no one will debate that. Why is that? The answer is simple: market share. Would anyone bother writing a worm that would infect open source email clients? In my opinion, probably not. Outlook (and derivatives) have a FAR larger market share, so they're the primary target. So what will happen when an open source project starts gaining steam and picking up market share? Well, let's look at firefox, arguably the most successful open source project to date. Even with only a 7% market share, they've had no less than three critical bug fixes since their official 1.0 release. In my research, that's more than microsoft during the same time period.

I haven't listened to the show yet, so I won't comment on the rest, but I thought it was worth dropping my $0.02 in on this point.

There are 3 issues when it comes to vulnerabilities: 1. How inherently vulnerable a piece of software is, 2. How quickly vulnerabilities are fixed, and 3. How critical are those vulnerabilities.

Outlook for a long time was inherently vulnerable because of the functionality that MS wanted to include to integrate it. I'm not sure if this is still the case - I am not an Outlook user.....

Firefox is, IMHO, more inherently secure than IE, but, perhaps more importantly, vulerabilities are fixed extremely quickly - in some cases before the proof of concept issues are actually released. This is a feature of Open Source development in particular, and something that MS will never be able to fully match. This will not, I don't believe, get worse as Firefox gets more popular.

jedediah wrote:Just curious about the latest episode of the tech show, the "WindowsCrash" episode on 05.11.05.

Warning: pro-windows content below

Does anyone else find this just a bit overdone? I listened to the first ten minutes of the episode, and it was simply unbearable. What's the point? Windows users have some misconceptions? [/i]

The point was it was an april fools spoof.

jedediah wrote: However, even with all of the advances in linux, I cannot connect to half of the wireless networks my laptop sees. I have a network card that supposedly should work great, but no amount of tinkering will get it to work. With Windows? You guessed it: works perfectly.

I agree with you on that. Wireless connectivity in Linux is a sore spot. It is getting better though.

jedediah wrote:* Windows crashing
The days of the blue screen have long since passed in my experience. I have been on Windows XP since the day it came out, and the ONLY (read that again ONLY) time I have had a serious crash has been because of hardware malfunction or poorly written drivers. Think Linux has problems getting good drivers written? well so does Windows. As a part time IT support person, I have been to nearly a hundred clients "in the wild" over the last year, all using Windows XP. The ONLY time I've had to get into safe mode was to deal with poorly written drivers. The operating system no longer fights me, which is more than I can say for linux.

I'm glad that you have had such success. My experience has not been any where near as stellar as yours. I've seen blue screens and green screens of death. I've been party to mysterious reboots and sudden shutoffs. I've watched system come out of the gate at a nice trot only to be sluggish snails in a few weeks time.

I try so desperately to stay out of the "wild" anymore because it is such a headache fixing these systems. I have enough to worry about managing all the windows machines at work.

Since I do not use Outlook or its cousin OE, I will not attempt to comment.

jedediah wrote:* Vulnerabilities
Outlook and Outlook express both have had some vulnerabilities, and no one will debate that. Why is that? The answer is simple: market share.

I've heard this argument refuted repeatedly. If market share was the case why are their not so many exploited Apache systems?

jedediah wrote:Would anyone bother writing a worm that would infect open source email clients? In my opinion, probably not. Outlook (and derivatives) have a FAR larger market share, so they're the primary target. So what will happen when an open source project starts gaining steam and picking up market share? Well, let's look at firefox, arguably the most successful open source project to date. Even with only a 7% market share, they've had no less than three critical bug fixes since their official 1.0 release. In my research, that's more than microsoft during the same time period.

To expect software to be bug free is only fooling yourself. Sure, it is a bit disheartening to see critical errors like this, but it is to be expected. Take note that FF is no where as mature as "IE" and those critical bugs have mostly been fixed. FF has some significant maturing to do, but it is still far less of a security threat (in my opinion) than windows is. Besides, if I am not mistaken, most of these critical bugs require that you have turned off security features in FF that are set as standard.

jedediah wrote:This might not be popular, I might be flamed, and if this is innappropriate let me know. However, open source advocates look a little uneducated at times when making sarcastic remarks about Windows like I heard in the latest tech show.

You spoke your piece and did it very well, I thought. Your comments were thought provoking and please, keep them coming.