[Gllug] "We Linux users have been doing all that for 10 years."

[Bruce Richardson]

On Fri, Sep 28, 2001 at 12:07:05AM +0100, Rev Simon Rumble wrote:
> On Thu 27 Sep, Bruce Richardson made the following spurious claims:
> 
> > Hardly.  MS apps are some of the worst offenders on that score.  Office 
> > 97 is unusable on NT or 2k unless you are a "power user".  Office 2000 is 
> > a bit better but still ships with a few apps that have this problem.  And 
> > don't get me started about Access...
> 
> Not sure what you really mean here.  I am a power user of Word (tech
> author) and still find all versions of MS Word unusable.  Word 2 was
> alright, if they had fixed the bugs.

I mean that none of the Office 97 apps will run properly (some not at
all) without extensive access rights to the local harddisk and the winnt
folder.  By "power user" I mean the default "do just about anything,
anywhere" priveleges that NT and 2k give to users.  The whole thing
makes a mockery of the concept of filesystem security.

This is why Melissa rampaged through the business sector, even though NT
is fairly dominant on the corporate desktop.  Though I suspect another
reason was that all those arseholes in red braces wouldn't tolerate
being anything less than a "power user".

> The thing I love about Word 2000 is it comes with a "find and repair
> corrupt files" tool.  Instead of fixing the things that cause
> corruption (dodgy code that doesn't properly keep track of the
> formatting objects) they add more bloat and call it a feature!  Now
> that's chutzpah!

That's commonplace, for MS.  Their monopoly inverts usual business
sense.  The flakier their software (up to a point), the more dependent
the trapped user is on service packs and upgrades.

-- 
Bruce

A problem shared brings the consolation that someone else is now
feeling as miserable as you.
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