GM vs. Bill Gates
 

Oh, those are so excellent.

I've frequently thought about the reliability of new vehicles (for the first three years) versus the reliability of this POS that I am typing on. But, I should be happy. This one (XP) normally makes it through a whole week before doing something that it wants to report to Microsoft. The old one (98) would crash at least once per day, but never told Microsoft about it.

One additional point that should be added to the list:

11. After you purchase your vehicle, it begins to slow down from the very first day you own it. After a couple of years, it won't go over 30 mph, no matter what you do. No matter how many calls are placed to the dealer, nobody can get it to go faster than 30 mph. You would have to replace all the software in the vehicle to get the speed back up to 100 mph. :rolleyes:

Gates and company really do have their heads up their collective asses.

Every company that sells mods for your car, and also porno magazines, comes by and puts a decal on your car without permission that's real hard to remove.

If your car breaks down on the side of the road, all the stuff that you have saved in the car and all the stuff in the trunk is immediately tossed out of the car and over the cliff. You are not allowed to save your stuff and nobody else can help you save it. You can take some small consolation that nobody else can use your stuff.

I wonder if GM would be doing so well if they outsourced most of their support?

I have gradually grown to loathe contacting MS support. They now outsource their enterprise level services to India. Recently I spent half a day on an installation related issue for Exchange server. The folks were helpful, spoke reasonable English, and provided detailed guidance, but still managed to completely miss the target. This was not the first time for such a failure, nor was it the worst. It is almost a pattern with them now a days.

It seems that GM and MS have in fact joined forces in that they both make products beyond their ability to support. We all suffer for this kind of miss-management. Bad and unsupportable products is why GM as a company is failing and Microsoft is running head long in the same direction. As I live a hand full of miles away from both Mr. Gates house and the Redmond campus, it is appalling that the wealthiest guy on the planet can’t provide competent support for his products, and it is insulting that he refuses to support his own countrymen.

In fairness to this comment, the need for backups has been know since the dawn of the computer age. It is not a direct or indirect responsibility of MS that hard drives fail. Hard drives are the very definition of state of the art technology, and absolutely no one should use a computer without a) a backup and b) one should never use a hard drive out of warranty.

How about the fact that he sells Windows XP all over the world, however, refuses to take any responsibility, whatsoever, for support of it. The computer manufacturer is saddled with this responsibility and they are thoroughly ill prepared for it.

You can get support from Microsoft for your brand new Microsoft product, but you must pay them for the privledge. :pukeface:

Why?? Isn't the typical warranty one or two years? :confused:

Not entirely true. If you buy a retail product, exclusive of enterprise stuff, MS provides free support for about a year. If you buy OEM, the OEM provider is obligated to offer the support. Other than that i agree :pukeface:

But you can probably buy a box from a vendor and put the retail product on it and get your support from MS.

He has no countrymen. He's a globalist. We're all one. We are the world. Khumbaya.

Reminds me of a poem from the UK.

bought a computer.
It cost a thousand pound,
But every time I switch it on
It keeps on falling down.

I used to think it was my friend,
But now it drives me 'round the bend.
You'd be surprised the time I spend:
REINSTALLING WINDOZE.

I switch it on -
What is this?
Something wrong with CONFIG SYS
This isn't my idea of bliss:
REINSTALLING WINDOZE.

I want to share my printers and
I want to share my files.
I want to share my anger
'Cause it drives me blooming wild.

My songs, they say, are sublime;
I've conquered cadence, mastered rhyme.
But now-a-days I spend my time:
REINSTALLING WINDOZE.

Reinstall - oh what fun!
It says it helps you get things done.
Every day now, everyone's
REINSTALLING WINDOZE.

Look again. It will say
All you do is plug and play.
How do I spend every day?
REINSTALLING WINDOZE.

It can't find my printer and
It can't locate my mouse.
The other day it drove me
Right out of the house.

Still unplugged, still unplayed,
I e-mailed God in search of aid.
He's far to busy, I'm afraid...
REINSTALLING WINDOZE.

Up at dawn for one more try
Will it work? - Can pigs fly?
How do I expect to die?
REINSTALLING WINDOZE.

I used to like a drink or three.
No time now - don't call for me.
How will I spend eternity?
REINSTALLING WINDOZE.

Yes, true. I was thinking of the software that is provided with a new machine.

Warranty depends on the drive manufacturer. The typical range is 1 to 3 years The folks that make drives know almost to the minute how much running time or power cycles they will survive before they fail. That’s why the warranty is what it is.

Aw if you know what yer doing you only gotta reinstall about every 3 years. How often you change yer oil?

I know quite a few people that have drives that are five, six, seven years old.

You are thinking limited number of cycles or limited number of hours???

This drive is two years old now and it has already started making some "click, click, click sounds every so often (hasn't done it in over one week now). Diametricalbenz thinks I'm on borrowed time. :o

Both hours and cycles apply. The servers I tend to run 24x7, as do most office workstations. In my experience, you can cycle a computer daily, not meaning a mere reboot but enough time to let the drive and whole machine cool completely, or let it run and it will last about the same time. I've seen countless cases where office machines bought in a batch will have the drives fail within days of each other. I could tell you stories.

IDE drives (both STA and AT/E/IDE) are akin to a mid engined vehicle at the cornering limit. You get a little whiny noise that you only hardly notice and you’re in the guardrail. I suggest getting a spare drive today, configure the drive as an extended partition and back up everything. A really good shareware program is called xxcopy. I use it on a lot of computers. There is also a program called ghost that will mirror one to the other.

I too know of some drives, including one of my mail servers that has been running 24x7 for about 11 years, but i sure don't put anything important on it, and even though nothing important is on it I still have 2 separate backups of everything on it on 2 separate machines.

I have one of the external hard drives that I have not installed yet. I got it to ease the task of backups. Right now I'm up to four CD's.

How does the xxcopy program or the ghost program simplify the task of backing up data? I'm not thinking of backing up the entire machine on the external drive, but, would you think this is preferable?

It's getting about time to reload all the software, anyway. So, I'll be more than happy to have all my documents protected. However, I'm sure that they fail at the most inopportune times. :(

I was in Redmond, WA on busness.

I was a stone's throw from Bill Gates, I wish I had a stone ;)

Yes drives have a knack for failing at the worst time. You should see the look on people’s faces when you have to tell them that 40 people can’t work for a day while a server is rebuilt. It’s the look of about $12,000 in labor cost flying out the window, not counting my time.

I always recommend backing up everything. Drive space is cheap, data gets scattered, and backing up everything is the only way to ever be sure you get….everything. I use xxcopy in conjunction with the system scheduler. The scheduler has existed since Windows 95 in one form or another. Xxcopy will copy everything you tell it to. The first time it copies everything, and after that it will check the source against the destination and only copy stuff that’s changed. So it only takes minutes.

Here’s a typical command line

c:\xxcopy\xxcopy X:\source Y:\destination /s/v/e/c/i/h/r/k/yy/d/WV0/X*\*.IE5\ /x\temp\ /q3>c:\batch\hydra_ddrive.log

here’s an explanation of the flags


/S Copies directories and subdirectories except empty ones.
/E Copies directories and subdirectories, including empty ones.
/V Verifies each new file.
/C Continues copying even if errors occur (skips the error causing files).
/I If destination does not exist and copying more than one file,
assumes that destination must be a directory.
/H Copies hidden and system files also.
/R Overwrites read-only files.
/K Copies attributes. Normal d:\xxcopy\xxcopy will reset read-only attributes.
/yy Suppresses prompting to confirm you want to overwrite an
existing destination file.
/X*\*.IE5\ /x\temp\ excludes directory or file. NOTE last "\" implies directory
/q3>c:\batch\hydra_ddrive.log a log file stored in c:\batch, called hydra_ddrive.log – name it as you wish. Note that /q3 is summary info, /q0 is everything.
/WV0 (as in zero and not oh) tells xxcopy to not barf due to relationships bettween the xxcopy version and various windows updates. Withou this xxcopy will stop working after a while, but you'll never know as you've automated the process.

I'd bet you couldn't get close enough to use some pretty powerful eh, rocks. Back to Gates, the xcopy program has been a part of DOS since DOS 3.2 if I remember correctly. Starting with NT4 and continuing to this day it fails in some increasingly unpredictable ways. Not an unfamiliar pattern on the larger scope. Or is it scale?

Anyway, xxcopy came along to enhance the xcopy program. At least it works reliably.

Microsoft warns of critical flaws
BBC

Windows is used in most of the world's home computers

Windows users are being urged to download the latest security updates from Microsoft to fix critical flaws.

The software giant has warned that three loopholes affecting Windows and Internet Explorer allow an attacker to take control of a personal computer.

Seven other updates have also been released to address less serious problems in its software.

Microsoft has been trying to improve the security of its software, releasing regular monthly security bulletins.

Bumper pack

Microsoft first alerted the millions of Windows users that it was planning a bumper pack of patches last week.

VULNERABLE SOFTWARE

Windows 98, ME, 2000, XP, Server 2003

Internet Explorer

Windows Web Client Service

Exchange Server

Outlook Express

Windows Interactive Training

Microsoft Agent

Windows Telnet Client

Microsoft ISA Server 2000

"For all consumers we recommend that they have Automatic Updates enabled," said Stephen Toulouse from Microsoft's Security Response Center.

This is a feature in Windows that downloads the software patches automatically. Computer users can also get the fixes manually from Microsoft security website.

The most serious flaws affect Windows and Internet Explorer and could be exploited by a malicious hacker to take over a computer system.

The other patches affect Windows, the Exchange server system, services for the Unix operating system, Microsoft's Interactive Training software for Windows, and ISA server, a network firewall program.

Security trials

Last month, Microsoft announced plans to offer its own anti-virus and security updates for home computers, called Windows OneCare.

The service would be on a yearly subscription basis, just like other anti-virus protection services.

It is being tested by the Microsoft employees before a trial release for the rest of the world later this year.

Although Microsoft already offers security features in its software for free, it recently bought anti-virus technology to help beef up security.

This serves the point I was making. Because IE is so tightly wound into the OS, even if you don’t use IE your computer is at risk if you don’t install the security fixes. Microsoft's arrogance is boundless.

Frankly I think the problem with windows lies more int the end user than the manufacturer.

I am not saying that the manufacturer is not responsible for some or most problems, but I myself have never had any of the kinds of issues I have read about or seen personally.

I leave my system on 24/7 and have only had a hard drive fail on me once, in over 15 years.

I have 400 gb of space, and am using at least 2/3 of it. backing up for me is no big deal. I backup my most important data.

I reformat once a year simply to keep things fresh and clean out the junk.

My system before I reformatted it last, was running fine for 2 years, even after moving the drive to a whole new system and having all the hardware redetected and reinstalled due to the changes in the new system.

I reboot my computer maybe once every 2 weeks at the most just to flush the ram out.

90% of the problems I see on computers is due to user error, either installing soemthing wrong, not keeping their system clean with antivirus protection, hard drive scans, spyware scans, and defragmenting.

I run spyware scans daily. I run full virus scans every week. I run a defragment every week, and I do a hard drive scan every 2 weeks. I also keep my bios updated and all my hardware drivers are constantly being checked for updates and new updates installed as they are available.

I keep my system running good by using preventative maintenance, just like most of us do on our cars. with regular maintenance, you will find that you will have less problems with the computer. Try driving your car with the same fluids in it without ever changing them or cleaning them out and replacing them, I am willing to bet that car wont last as long as it could have if you had done the proper preventative maintenance.

Even when I used windows 95, 98, 98se, and me, I rarely had any problems, and if i did they were not major and were easy to fix.

In my opinion, computer hardware is quite reliable. I have a few older machines, one being my laptop that a client gave me because it was having problems, and all I did to it was format it and install a new os, the client didnt want to and just bought a new laptop, and gave it to me, and I have been using the laptop for the last 2 years without so much as a hiccup. I only have a few things on it, gps software, os, ms office, and my normal utilities.

The problem is that too many people blindly download and install stuff, and or spend lots of time downloading this or that software, etc from unreliable sources and end up giving access to things that will cause problems. And I am not saying I dont do the same from time to time, but I am careful about what I download and install in my machines.

I do agree that we need to stop outsourcing our tech support call centers to india or anywhere else, Frankly the lack of being able to understand someone on the other end of the line makes a support call 10 times worse than it has to be. I am not saying that the issue is with ability, but rather with the ability to understand the accent of the person who you are speaking to.

I have worked for my father, who has foreigners from all over calling his office allt he time because of the nature of his business, and I am pretty good at understanding many forein accents, but sometimes it is almost impossible to decipher what you are being told.

Another problem is that when you call some of these call centers, they may not have authority to make certain decisions, which I find is a big problem.

Thats my opinion.

Frankly whether or not you use a mac or a pc, both are not 100% reliable.

Alon

Years ago, before ol' Ma Bell was broken up, they came out with an ad campaign slogan which idle malcontents cruelly twisted for their own nefarious ends and put it on bumperstickers. It could work for Microsoft as well:

We're Microsoft. We don't care. We don't have to.

The original slogan was the same only in the affirmative starting with: We're the phone company....

And what's worse, they fly up out of nowhere and obscure your windshield while you're driving.

Interesting stuff which I needed to hear. If I could pick your brain briefly...

I've got a Gateway laptop with the Pentium M 1.5 GHz processor. While I understand they run cooler than previous models, it's not a good idea to leave one of these on 24/7 is it? I get the impression that with desktops it's less wear and tear to just leave them on.

Sometimes, I boot up and shut down 2 or 3 times a day. Is this ultimate folly or pragamatic prudence? You mention that this sort of thing likely as not will not affect the lifespan of the hard drive but I imagine there would be a limit to that.

Should I just get an external hard drive and back it up once every week or two? My previous laptop, a dell with the dreaded Me, died, or the hard drive did after about 4 years of use, and I would like to avoid that scenario this time around.

Say, did you ever go to the old "Last Exit on Brooklyn" coffee shop/cafe, over in the U district? It shut down in '92. The end of an era...

Does anyone here use FreeBSD? I'm thinking about giving it a shot.

Tell me about wireless networking
 

One of my kids (#1) has a Mac notebook computer that automatically seeks networks and gives you the opportunity to log on to anything it detects. Kid #2 has a Windows XP laptop (Dell) that does not have that capacity. Is there anything I can buy for #2 that will give her computer something like #1?

I have a wire-based ethernet network in my house but this wireless thing I just haven't kept up with because I didn't intend to go that way. What can I do that will allow me to keep my network but give it wireless capability?

Technology is like a tasteless, odorless gas that will infiltrate life, no matter the barriers.

Nice to see you posting Alon!

Were I to limit my comments to the 9 computers running in my office now I still wouldn’t agree. Were I to open it to the hundreds of computers I care for, have done so for a long time, I'd say it’s not at all true. The users add to the issues but are not the core cause. Nothing a user can do should effect the OS. From this perspective, Windows 95 was far more reliable than is XP.

This week I've pronounced a 1.5 year old, E machine with a dead system board and failing hard drive, fixed a video problem stemming from windows update, replaced a network card that failed after ~ 5 years of 24x7 use, troubleshot and restarted 2 Exchange email servers which failed due to inability to handle some virus laden email (even with 2 separate virus scans and 2 separate spam filters processing the mail ahead of the mail server), replaced a faulty USB cable on an external hard drive, and fixed a screwed up but brand new machine because of operator error. Their previous machine died after 5 years, and even though they’d never used an XP machine, the business owner decided to save some $ and set it up themselves rather than call. In doing so they changed a 20 minute job into a 2 hour job. There’s also a problem that’s cropped up on a web server and I haven’t had the time to track it down, nor will I as the computer’s going to be retrofitted to win 2003 web server version. And I haven’t been working but 20% of my normal work load because of my back damage.

10 years ago, it used to be the case that upwards of 75% of all hardware had problems out of the box, and virtually all software needed some modification to be usable. I stopped selling computers for this reason. Now a days its about 20% for hardware, and about the same for software, exclusive of outside influences (spyware/viruses/3rd party drivers). Still not worth selling computer stuff, if you supply a warranty.

I'm not sure what their response level is. I've had several cases over the years that earned me tech documents created by MS. Every one of the tech documents conveniently omitted crucial details necessary to diagnose and resolve the stated problem. This is still their pattern.

A short story: several years ago a Dell server would spontaneously reboot while running a backup used with NT4’s ntbackup program. I first worked with Dell, and replaced every component in the server, then did a ground up rebuild of the OS, and the problem persisted. I turned to Microsoft and spent about 30 hours with them. No solution. And I stopped using the $2,300 backup drive. A year later I was talking with another MS support tech about it while on another topic. They did some research and suggested looking for a file with a pipe character in the file name “|” I found such a file and renamed it. The tape backup worked reliably ever after. Now there is NO WAY a backup program should ever interpret a file name as anything but a name, but for reasons never explained, and never resolved through the NT4 product cycle, it remained a problem. Sounds hauntingly familiar to the xcopy issue mentioned above. Thanks MS! :pukeface:

Laptops are very subject to wear and tear due to heat cycling. And even if not due to that, the transformer, or maybe it’s an inverter (I don’t know the specific component name) supplying power to the video fails after 2-3 years. I don’t think power cycling will make a difference. One of my pat suggestions is to remove items not used such as batteries floppy or CD drives, even the covers under the computer and use fans to blow air into the box from all angles. Also there are laptop coolers devices which push air against the bottom. In some cases folks even remove the keyboard and use an external one to permit greater cooling. The objective is to remove excess heat, which over time causes components to fail. Z had a similar case recently. Never did hear the outcome. I have 4 laptops sitting on a shelf that all failed in one or more ways. I now replace them ever 3 years or at the first hiccup.

The ultimate pattern failure here is with the Dell Optiplex line. Folks love these due to the small form factor. Problem is I've seen up to I think it was 15 of them, which were bought in a batch fail with in a week of each other. I've seen lots more fail but this was the biggest group shrug. They were all out of warranty by a couple of months. Dell wouldn’t budge on good will. The company who bought this had bought about 300 Dell computers over the years. As recently as 2 months ago another 3 Optiplex failed within 3 days. All due to heat related problems.


yes every day if you use it daily.See the xxcopy reference above.

Oh yeah, i went there several times, most notably was with some friends on my first hallucinogenic drug "experiment." But I think it was on Broadway. haven't been there since '78. Great cheese cake and expresso!

Go to a local computer store (Staples has some of the best values) and get a wireless network adapter and a wireless hub. The NetGear brand is my fav but they're all about teh same. The adapters are available as a PC card connector, USB connector, and probably, but I've not seen it, firewire connector. The wireless hubs plug in to any current hub on your wired network. You have to twiddle with the settings and use the built in security, if you care

But my built in paranoia says don’t ever transact bank stuff or anything employing a user name/password on a wireless network. Everything you do can be monitored by a 3rd party.

Worse, it's akin to a prosthetic device. Painful to the point of being indispensable once you have it.

I've used it and other BSD variants. Fast and secure, but many more application and hardware compatibility issues than Linux. For certain special purpose applications, it's tough to beat.

My current firewall of choice is FreeBSD based - m0n0wall (link here.) Incredibly elegant and secure design, fast, and easy to configure. If you're into VPN's or traffic shaping, it's the best of the freebies I've seen. You can run it on cheap commodity hardware (again - pay attention to the compatibility list), but I run it on a solid-state, flash based embedded platform (Soekris 4801.)

It's also great for securing wireless access - I just run a generic access point of the third NIC in a DMZ. The captive portal functionality is more secure and flexible than WEP or MAC based security.

I hear you on the security issue. It's so bad that we are not allowed to access any agency network if we're using a wireless-ready computer. My kid has access to 2 neighbor's networks because they have no pswd protection. Good thing she's honest. She told both neighbors and they don't care.

Other kid has moved out (thank you jayzuz!) and wants to access the university wirelss system where she's in school so I'm trying to help her out with that.

BTW Tracey, what's the max BAUD rate on wireless? Somebody told me it was pretty slow. I'm used to either T1's (3) at work or Cox Cable at home. I can no longer tolerate dial-up.

Bot

Depends...on who controls the wireless network, and how connections are made. If you don't know, paranoia can be your friend. However, if you are good about keeping your system patched and run a software firewall, the risk is pretty minimal when accessing secure sites such as financial institutions. Unsecure sites (such as here) are a different story...just don't be a dummy and use the same ID/PW at your bank as you do in community forums. :D

Even on an untrusted wireless network, any web surfing over 128-bit SSL is virtually impossible to crack. If you see the 'https" in the URL, and the "lock" icon in your browser, the chances of your traffic getting sniffed are virtually nil. All that can be monitored is where you went, the information in the pipe is not at risk.

Unless...your system becomes compromised. Which is the primary reason for the "no wireless" policies many companies have for road warriors. Sniffing of data shooting across the airwaves is not really a concern - encrypting this data using VPN's and/or SSL is trivial. The primary security concern lies in the increased vulnerability to attack when using an untrusted network. You have no idea who you're sharing the wireless network with, and many wireless access points are not behind a firewall - making you vulnerable to attack from anyone on the Internet. Given Microsoft's track record with remote Windows exploits, the risk is very real. Software firewalls help, but they are way less secure than a properly managed hardware firewall.

And, once your laptop is compromised, the VPN and SSL you count on to encrypt your data actually works to the attackers advantage. The laptop essentially becomes a trojan horse, allowing the possibility for a skilled attacker to have unfettered, and untraceable access over connections which are presumed to be secure.

I don’t work with wireless all that much. I've done 2x to be exact. But I think the 802.11 g is the current public spec and it is 53 or 54 million bps, depending on what sources you read. I saw a reference to an 802.11 “H” and “I” but think those are distance and power management related, enhancements -- meaning a quick search didn’t tell me what I was after and I didn’t want to read an 80 page .pdf

For comparison a dial up is theoretically about 56 kbps but never really hits that, an average 2 chanel ISDN is 128 kbps, an average DSL “pro” is 640 kbps, a is T1 is about 1.5 mpbs. By comparison an average business network will sustain 100 mbps and the newest office stuff is 1 gbps. So while wireless has merely to double to be on par with office networks, internet connectivity has a very long way to go.

What I'm talking about is signing on to someone else’s wireless access point. While its not my field of specialty and I'm not pretending to be a final authority on the subject, a computer running a packet sniffer that shares a hub with a wireless router can record all traffic passing through the router. While decoding the information is a different issue it isn't all that hard to do, given access to the encryption spec and some tools are readily available.

Unless one has a specialized security encryption firmware it’s all standard technology that readily available.

Agreed. I had a case recently where an office was subject to a so called man in the middle attack.

THats why I went to the far greater effort to pull cat5 cables in my house for a home network....houses here are close enough you have way too much risk with a wireless network....A wireless would have been far easier adn only a nominal extra cost..but peace of mind knowing nobody is on the street hacking in...or a neighbor is doing the same is worth far more.

Nope...not possible with 128-bit SSL, not even realistic with the outdated and rarely used 40-bit SSL. The last contest I read about took over 3 hours to break a 40-bit key - with 250 networked computers. 128-bit SSL can not be brute-force cracked with current computing technology; it's a mathematical impossibility given the number of key combinations. Most cryptography experts expect it to last at least another 10 years before computing power puts it at risk.

WEP encryption between a wireless card and access point is a different story - it's theoretically possible to crack it with something as simple as a sophisticated PDA, but it's still very time consuming and not a huge risk. Even then - if you have an SSL browser connection to your bank over a WEP connection, cracking the WEP does you no good - you still can't crack the SSL packets it contains.

As far as e-machines, I havent seen one e-machine that was not full of problems. you do get what you pay for in regards to that.

I myself either build them myself or go with dellw hich I have had great luck with.

The server I setup in my dad's office, a Dell poweredge server, has been up and running with only 5 reboots due to me doing some maintenance since it was purchased 2.5 years ago.

It has been running flawless. I recently upgraded it to server 2003 and it has been working beautifully.

Even the old Nt4 server has been up and running without problems for over 4 years, and I built that one.

Alon

Good advice. I think my Dell's problem might have been the transformer giving power to the screen -- though it didn't seem to power up at all -- w/ or w/o video. Can that transformer be replaced? I imagine it's hard to get into the guts of those things.

I've heard about the seperate cooling fan -- I'm going to check that out.

Are you saying that trying to repair a laptop is folly? Would it be worth it to buy a new hard drive around the expiration date?

You might have gone to B & O Espresso on Broadway, they were around then (maybe still). The "Exit" was originally on Brooklyn and NE 40th and after the owner died in '92, may God rest his soul, they moved up to 52nd and University Ave, but it wasn't the same, and it's gone now. It was quite the scene.