On Thursday 27 January 2005 00:02, Thomas Cameron wrote: [...] >> I swear, after all the ruckus that been raised about using windows >> to download something, that M$ would fix that. But in 15 years >> they haven't. Wouldn't want to be able to download a pirated >> program now you see. > >That's just silly. To think that Microsoft would be stupid enough > to somehow build in an intentionally bad download mechanism to > thwart the .001% of users who download "warez" is way out there in > Conspiracy Theory zone. Well, as a matter of fact, I was personally told that by a redmond weenie about 15 years ago, when I was trying to download a patch for a COTS program we were trying to use at the time. Finally, somebody took pity on a poor tv chief engineer and sent him a floppy with the demo version of procomm on it. Once I got rid of the M$ ftp proggy I was trying to use, it was a 10 minute job at what was then 2400 baud, to get the patch I needed. I used to be a fan of M$ twenty years ago, but that was my instant education about how M$ felt about actually being able to move a binary file to what was then a dos-5.0 machine. They were, even then, far more concerned with the piracy aspect of a good file transfer program than they were in the utility of it to distribut their own patches. And after several more school classes in the redmond classroom, usually over a disappearing file in an NT 3.58 filesystem (it had that nasty habit of simply losing a file about twice a year) that they were convinced we never had a fscking license for no matter how many times I quoted them the seriel number from the cd that was shipped with the machine from dear old I've Been Moved (which did not contain the file in question even though its a required piece of NT-3.58, and resulted in my verbal fisticuffs with the jerks at the time, that one was eventually fixed by cbs imaging me another hard drive and sending it in via ups, only 3 days downtime for a major communications box at the tv station, lost commercial sales probably in excess of 15 grand if we hadn't reverted to the telephone, running our LD bill up about a grand over those 3 days) I long ago came to the conclusion that the less I had to do with them, the better off I'd be. FWIW, NT-4.0 also suffers from this same lose a file occasionally bug. Possibly not as often, but it did happen on one box, twice in 4 years, same file. The neighbors all know I'm an electronics/computer geek, but I long ago got them all trained that other than installing a copy of openoffice or mozilla/firefox for them, I don't deal with miss-configured windows boxes and all the viri/spyware that comes with them. This is a 100% linux equipt house. It was amigados before that, and os9/nitros9 before that... >> Just one more reason to get away, as far away as you can >> get, from anything M$ related. > >There are countless reasons to stay away from Microsoft products. > This isn't one of them. It's wild-eyed conspiracy theory > silliness. No conspiracy based on my experience with them, in fact its a hell of a good reason to stay away from M$. It doesn't take too many whacks at it where there is absolutely no common sense on the other end of a $2 a minute phone call like those, to sour me forever. You wanna deal with them, fine. But I'm not buying the prozac one needs after a round with redmond. Lifes too short to put up with headaches and stress like that. >Thomas -- Cheers, Gene "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed Howdershelt (Author) 99.32% setiathome rank, not too shabby for a WV hillbilly Yahoo.com attorneys please note, additions to this message by Gene Heskett are: Copyright 2005 by Maurice Eugene Heskett, all rights reserved.
