Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!gem.mps.ohio-state.edu!ginosko!uunet!microsoft!philba From: philba@microsoft.UUCP (Phil Barrett) Newsgroups: comp.misc Subject: Re: Low Productivity of Knowledge Workers Message-ID: <7971@microsoft.UUCP> Date: 6 Oct 89 03:53:10 GMT References: <9676@venera.isi.edu> <189@crucible.UUCP> <291@voa3.UUCP> <7916@microsoft.UUCP> <6375@ficc.uu.net> Reply-To: philba@microsoft.UUCP (Phil Barrett) Organization: Microsoft Corp., Redmond WA Lines: 117 In article <6375@ficc.uu.net> peter@ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva) writes: >In article <7916@microsoft.UUCP>, philba@microsoft.UUCP (Phil Barrett) writes: >> I'm not sure what your point is. > >I'll spell it out. Systems integration under DOS, for anything but "load one >program at a time and run it", is prohibitively difficult for the vast >majority of users, who are not technically oriented. It doesn't need a >guru, but it's far more difficult than it needs to be. and not for unix? Desqview and windows have very user friendly installation programs. > >> I guess we just plain disagree. By the way, don't confuse the person with >> the company. The statement -- everything just plain works is maybe true for >> a limited set of applications but I find it odd coming from a *NIX support >> guy. How many times has uucp gotten wedged on you? > >Under a modern system-V system? Never. wow! thats pretty amazing. maybe unix *is* approaching reliability. > >How many times has Fido gotten wedged on you. Oh, that's right. Fido just >shuts down at 4AM every day so it doesn't have to deal with the problem. who uses fido? I certainly don't. I don't know of any sites that do. But since Fido has nasty problems, I guess that means all PC comm apps do too :-) > >> Binary Compatibility is a key factor -- one which the *NIX >> market sadly lacks. > >Can you say "System-V on an 80386 with an AT-bus"? I've even got binary device >drivers to port. Application support is flawless. flawless? wow, a perfect system. amazing! the unix market is fragmented. there are a miriad of architectures that it runs on. Thats its strength. But its also a weakness. try running a SystemV 386 app on a sun 3. There are something like 40M machines that can run DOS apps. Whats the installed base of any version of Unix? > >> Its not at all clear the Emulators under unix work >> that well. > >DOS emulators on said System-V/386 box have been very good to me. do they support mice well? windows apps? graphical apps? TSRs? `dirty' apps, dos extended apps? cut and paste between apps? > >> >> Security isn't >> >> super tight but its good enough for many (if not most) installations. > >> >Had a look in comp.virus recently? > >> seen any good internet viruses lately? > >That's a red herring. The internet is deliberately designed as a low- or no- >security environment. And for all that it's more secure than any PC net. >I'm on the security mailing list, and have yet to see a System-V related >problem show up. Its not a red herring. Just because it was designed that way doesn't mean squat. security is only as good as the weakest link. The PC networks do have some limited security features -- server password protection. Granted that this isn't a complete solution but the environment is much more limited than say arpa or uucp. > >> Besides, if viruses >> are a concern, there are simple methods of avoiding them (like don't run stuff >> off BBSs and don't boot off of suspected diskettes and ...) > >... and don't buy shrink-wrap software from a computer store, and so on. You >*haven't* been reading comp.virus, have you? Oh yeah, every package you buy has at least 3. :-) I especially like the one where someone claimed to have bought a package with some large number of viruses infecting the single package. Most of these said virus laden packages are totally unsubstantiated. A lot of them have come from SW rental stores where they have a shrink wrapper in the back room. Who knows where the disks have been. There have been several real cases, though. The FreeHand one was probably the most well publicised. The people at Aldus are totally hard core about viruses now -- I'd be real suprised to see something like that from them again. Most companies are *very* careful. We take carefull steps here to prevent this happening to us. No SW company needs that rap. And yes, I read comp.virus. > >I don't think I ever used the term "unusable". Kludge, yes, and baroque, yes, >and a waste of resources, yes. But not unusable. Hell, I've even recommended >the bloody things. But setting up an office around a bunch of networked >DOS machines is a dead end. And the cancerous spread of the beasts has >hurt productivity. You are right, you didn't say unusable, just about everything but, though. You did say that they were isolated environments where data sharing is done by passing diskettes around -- which I showed via example is not true at all. I grant that Unix is far more elegant in most ways but elegance isn't everything. You may have disgust for the majority but people do vote with their $$$. Mainframe systems, Unix, VAXes, etc simply don't solve their problems -- if they could, why hasn't there been an enormous rush to buy these products for office automation. Thats not to say that there isn't a need for those machines but look at the market researce, mainstream corporate computing uses networked PCs. Well, this thread isn't going anywhere but its been fun. Have a nice night! Phil And of course, the above opinions are mine.