Chile Forum

This was so funny, I did not know where to post it:
http://www.latimes.com/technology/sns-a ... 9005.story

Just too many jokes and low blows come to mind. Most revolve around, "I didn't know there was computers in most the courts" or "perhaps things will run smoother now".

I think that was the infamous McAfee update. Basically, McAfee sent out an update that caused an important Windows XP file to be detected as a virus. When it tried to delete it, computers got caught in a reboot loop.

Just another reason to avoid the big boys like Norton and McAfee. Me? I use the free and highly rated Microsoft Security Essentials.

That is what Chile rightly gets for signing over their government computer soul to the MS devil.

eeuunikkeiexpat wrote:That is what Chile rightly gets for signing over their government computer soul to the MS devil.

Amen, amen and amen.


It'd be interesting to find out who the bureaucrat(s) is/are who made that decision and see if they suddenly went out and bought some high value items shortly afterwards. A new car or house etc. Not accusing, just saying, it'd be interesting to know.

Chuck J 3.0 wrote:

eeuunikkeiexpat wrote:That is what Chile rightly gets for signing over their government computer soul to the MS devil.

Amen, amen and amen.


It'd be interesting to find out who the bureaucrat(s) is/are who made that decision and see if they suddenly went out and bought some high value items shortly afterwards. A new car or house etc. Not accusing, just saying, it'd be interesting to know.

I would be more interested to know what those government officials run at home. If they run Mac or Linux, then they really are guilty.

seriously though, I would hold any systems admin (or whomever hired them) responsible that did not have sufficient experience with the likes of the big anti-virus makers. Anyone that has been around the block with them in even a small enterprise environment knows that they are known for eating windows from the inside out.

I once had Mcfee eat an office network years ago and nearly wiped out half a million dollars worth of data that took a team of researchers 3 years to collect. Most of it was irreplaceable one of kind type anthropological field research. I didn't do it, but the systems admin that did spent the next two weeks picking up the pieces and recovering the file structure bit by bit. The dang thing did more damage in one go than any virus I had ever encountered in the wild, including hitting backup drives on the network and crippling win98 desktops, win2000 (server and desktop) all at one time to the point that most of the network had to be reinstalled from scratch.

I gave up on windows shortly after that, and have never had to worry about such problems again.

Do you know what your virus scanner is doing while you are asleep?

A better solution than leaving windows behind is to ditch XP, use Windows 7 and then make sure you don't install any of the Norton/McAfee crappy bloatware. I am using Windows 7 with Microsoft Security Essentials and I am very happy with my system.

And no I am not another talking Micromoron. 2 years ago, I was 100% Linux, Ubuntu, Suse, Mint on all of my computers and I was out to convert everyone to open source. A little more than a year ago I took Windows 7 Beta for a spin and I experienced what a nice OS it is and how it just does things better and easier. I am now down to 5% or less Linux usage.

Maybe that will change in the future, I will probably check out the newest Ubuntu, maybe in a couple of years Linux will get ahead of Microsoft once again, but right now Windows 7 has the lead....

And by the way...XP sucks. I bought a HP netbook several months ago with XP installed on it and my overall experience on it sucked. I spent about 70% of the time I was using it in Ubuntu Netbook Remix and it was great to use, but I felt hampered. I went ahead and installed Windows 7 and it's a dream. I take my netbook everywhere and get a lot more productive use of it thanks to Windows 7, something I could never do on XP.

yea, I have not heard the normal grumbles about win 7 that other versions have had (yet). Still, like being able to drive my old hardware until the doors fall off, and linux will let me do that. It keeps my total cost of ownership down to about my monthly power bill.

I have several 5-6 year old computers in daily use in my office running linux, and every time one dies for one reason or the other I go "yippy, I finally get to replace them with new computers". Unfortunately, I have been saying that for at least 3 years and invariably the first wiggle of a wire or a slap to the side and they come back to life for another year. I think at some point I am just going to take them outback and shoot them like an old dog. Now I am eyeballing some of the hyper-thin workstations that run on like 30-50 watts of juice, plus the monitor. It might finally be more cost effective to replace them all, and reclaim some desk space.

If you are an all Linux office, you might find it better to replace with thin clients and have just one powerhouse linux server to handle everything. It depends how many computers you are running and how much you want to save.....but a thin client like this could be cheaper than a new computer and reduce your energy bill significantly. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/ ... ooks010-20 or http://www.amazon.com/NComputing-L130-N ... pd_sim_e_1

They claim they only run less than 5 watts and compared to a typical computer, you could save enough on electricity to pay for them in a year or so.

First of all N computing makes absolutely the worst garbage, and lies about their linux support so badly. MY NUMBER ONE MOST HATED TECH COMPANY. I dislike them even more than I dislike MS.

They don't support linux anymore than my cat does. I have a box of those sitting in my closet that don't even make good paperweights, let alone computers. They tested one very old version of Ubunto linux (like 3 years old), and only partially at that. If you call their tech support, they will tell you directly they don't support linux. It is however boldly printed on all of their boxes, and all of their PR across the internet. N-computing owes me about $300 I paid for that junk, and at least twice that for the false advertising.

There are plenty of real linux solutions for thin clients, other than those n-computing boxes. Asus has a full computer with an atom processor that bolts to the back of the monitor, and use something like 30watts. I have not priced them lately, but I believe they were going for around $250 each last I checked.

Thin clients are all fun and games (good for schools for example), until a earthquake hits. Been there done that before in offices. In a sense we do run thin clients. A lot of our work is handled by a central web server(s), mail document management, and so on. A particular computer going down does not stop things, but in the same sense a particular server going down does not stop things either.

I have just found by loooooong experience not to put all your eggs in one basket with workstations (or any computer for that matter), or ever put yourself in a position where you need to send the entire office home for a day because some mission critical whatever bit the dust. A network glitch, power outage at one location, whatever, and works stops completly. It then takes you (if you are lucky) an hour for everyone to get back in the swing of what they were doing. Also, you find out the hardway, no matter how much you backup stuff, there is always something that is going to go AWOL in a crash for some reason. I like having more places to look for say that critical document that did not get picked up by the last backup cycle, but is still sitting in a tmp file or whatever.