Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sun-barr!decwrl!pa.dec.com!bacchus!mwm From: mwm@pa.dec.com (Mike (My Watch Has Windows) Meyer) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.programmer Subject: Re: Why Amiga Gurus???? Message-ID: Date: 4 Feb 91 23:20:58 GMT References: <1991Jan31.035105.14277@usenet.ins.cwru.edu> <156@dogmelb.dog.oz.au> <3680.27ad65e7@miavx1.acs.muohio.edu> Sender: news@pa.dec.com (News) Organization: Missionaria Phonibalonica Lines: 48 In-Reply-To: rlcollins@miavx1.acs.muohio.edu's message of 4 Feb 91 18:47:19 GMT In article <3680.27ad65e7@miavx1.acs.muohio.edu> rlcollins@miavx1.acs.muohio.edu (Ryan 'Gozar' Collins) writes: In article <156@dogmelb.dog.oz.au>, david@dogmelb.dog.oz.au (David Le Blanc) writes: > It can be your fault for running a PD program in the background. > At a software house I worked at, PD programs were *BANNED* because > bugs introduced by them were considered harmful, and unneccesary. Are Programs so hard to write for the Amiga that every PD prg is bug ridden? I think it's just someone being overly paranoid. In my experience, PD software is no more likely to crash the system than commercial software. With commercial software, you have to convince them that their software is broken, and not something else in your environment. Then you have to get an udpate - which may or may not cost money. With PD software, there's a high probability that you've got the sources, and can try to fix it yourself. You pays your money (or not, in some cases) and takes your chances. Case in point - when I started running some of the 'protection' software now available, exactly one PD program I regularly used caused problems (lots of games did, but who cares - they're just games). Three commercial programs caused problems. One of the last three has as yet to be fixed, and will crash the system if I'm not carefull. Places have different bans on what software you can have locally for different reasons. Some places ban any commercial software except those purchased by the company, for legal reasons. Others ban any free-redistributable software, because such things are obtained through channels that are suspectable to virii and similar creations of the immature. The virus problem may be the problem referred to above. But commercial software isn't immune to this problem, especially when so many vendors have shrink-wrap machines, and no qualms about re-wrapping software that a user has returned. I take the same anti-virus precautions with both commercial and PD software. Never boot it; always try it on a system without anything vital mounted first; check the mounted file systems for changes afterwards. The only exception are disks that come from CBM direct.