off topic - worm warning

Hi all,
so i know that this has nothing to do with hockey but...
I have been getting a lot of emails infected with klez virus that use emails of people from this forumn and uscho. I would suggest going to cnet.com and downloading some antivirus to prevent yourself from getting infected and going to symantec.com and downloading their klez removal tool. Just trying to help

Or get a Mac

Or a unix box...

Funny you should say that, since I just got one "from" you. Sure, it might not have actually come from you, but still a bit ironic.

I agree. In my opinion, one of the best anti-virus solution for computer users at this point in time is OSX on a Macintosh.

lol,
that is highly amusing actually. just in case people who do not know much about the virus are curious...the email address listen as the from for these emails is taken from the address list off of the infected computer and sent to another address from that address book.
I have gotten emails from vicb, kepler, the uscho administrator, and about 10 other uscho users

yes, getting a mac would solve the problem!

Very expensive way to solve the problem, IMHO. Way overpriced for what you get.

But, there are MANY other benefits. Did you know that Plug-n-Play "technology" was a fully functional reality back in the late 80's, early 90's? Really, it was, and still is on the Mac.

Actually, they're very reasonlably priced for what you get. Sure you can buy a crapola Dell box for under a grand, and you'll get exactly that. Crapola that will start to fall apart in a year and be obsolete before then. Macs use high quality hardware, which would cost just as much in an equivalently equipped Wintel box. Of course, Macs look better and actually work.

And it even qualifies as a Unix box, as John suggested.

They're a ripoff. The price of proprietary architecture. An unfailing law of economics.

I think this argument stands about as much chance of being resolved as the Louie's-Hot Truck fight. People are very passionate on both sides (Mac users tend to be particularly adamant), and are never going to change their minds.

well, I actually use both platforms on a day to day basis, and from my experience, have come to my PERSONAL opinion about this matter. it really isn't that I'm just adamant, I know both worlds.

usually, the windows people I speak with either:
have never used a Mac, or
used on around the mid 90's when Mac's were struggling

so, in MY mind, I feel that windows people are the adamant ones, but...

I won't post anymore to sway the discussion on this board away from hockey.

Tastes Great!

Less Filling!

Okay, I know I should do this... but I can't resist...

[Q]The price of proprietary architecture. An unfailing law of economics.[/Q]

Nothing about the Mac is proprietary... well, very little. The PowerPC is as open of an architecture as Intel. The RAM's the same, the hard drives are the same. Your confusing proprietary with lesser used. Just because less people use it doesn't mean it's any more private. There was an article on Slashdot a month or so ago about building your own Mac, it's possible.

The Mac OS isn't anymore proprietary than Windows. Less, actually, Apple technologies adopt/create standards - like MPEG4 and 802.11b and *real* Java.

Microsoft creates it's own proprietary technologies like WINDOWS Media and their own version of Java and .NET, etc, etc.

The real economic law here is you pay more for higher quality.

If you don't wanna pay for it, that's fine. If you don't like, that's fine. But don't go making assumptions.

Can any of the Mac people explain why at any given time in the Uris computer lab, or any university computer lab I've ever been in, at least 50% of the Macs are frozen? Most of my contact with Macs has been in such labs, and my experiences have been overwhelmingly negative (i.e., I have to sit down and get up four times just to find a machine that is working). I don't want to blame the computers, per se, but maybe they just don't function well in that environment (or maybe us PC users just don't know how to use them properly, leading them to crash).

Graham,

Yeah, pretty much the last guess there... more so than the users, the lab ops... how often do you think they actually go over and fix a Mac? They don't know what to do. If they did it'd take 30 seconds of their time to do a bit of maintance and make it work better in the future.

Additionally, the old SideCar that each and every one of them is running sucks majorly and crashes constantly, so 90% of it is probably SideCar's fault.

-Fred

I've experienced the same thing, not just on the older iMacs hanging around, but on some brand spanking new machines in the music library.

Besides, gaming is much better on a PC

I actually have some real world reasons why the PC's are always running but the Macs are not, but I don't want to detract the discussion here, so if anybody is REALLY interested in hearing them, then email me jsan1@cornell.edu (at my spam email account).

Finally!!

I've been waiting months for a Mac vs. PC debate to spice up this boring hockey crap!

Well, I wondered when this pissing match was finally going to flare up. Having my roots as a Mac person myself, but having worked in the Windows world for several years (and also having a good deal of Unix box experience as well), I must say that the PC community has historically been more passionate about bashing Macs than the Mac world is in defending them. Now I happened to have bought a Wintel Dell last year because of cost and my desire to play NHL 2002 (and I still have my old mac in case I need it), but that still doesn't mean I can't covet those nice Powerbooks and the unix-based OSX. I've never had any major (knock on wood) OS problems with either platform, but I do prefer the OS control you have with the Macs.

But can we put a moratorium on this? Trying to convince either side of anything is like trying to convince certain North Dakota fans that it's possible that a nationally competative team can emerge from the ECAC.

Yeah, and until the Macs prove themselves by playing some real teams....

but those PC's haven't really played anyone yet either!!!

DeltaOne81 '03 wrote:

The real economic law here is you pay more for higher quality.

You mean like TeX, and PERL, and GNU, and Apache, and...

JTW,

Touché, but open source is unique in its model... a bunch of talented programs working on something and giving it away for the good of the community. I stand by my quote when it comes to software/hardware produced by companies which have to care about profits.

I do agree with Rich that neither side is gonna be convinced and that this shouldn't be dragged on. I tried to throw in my last line last time as an olive branch... if you don't like, that's fine. No one's gonna be covinced, least of all by a forum argument. But just admit your dislike is a personal choice/decision and not based on false-facts about the marketplace.

< / topic>, right?

Well, it should be obvious to even the most dim-witted individual who holds an advanced degree in hyperbolic topology, bhay-gn-flay-vn

OK, back to the actual worm.

I actually went by-the-book through the Symantec Klez removal for XP. It isn't fun and isn't something you should do with less than a few free hours.

The other shoe dropping is that naturally it turns out my system at least was completely bug-free, so if you got an infected file from "kepler" it was sent from someplace else with my warmest regards. I learned more about XP admin than I ever wanted to know and nuked my NAV 2002 along the way (which gave me an excuse to upgrade to 2003).

Greg,

Just got one today from "kepler" but did not open of course...

Thanks for the "warm regards" but I'm sure you won't mind if I dont send you anything in return.

Thanks for the info.

Not so fast about the quality of the hardware. I bought a Powerbook in February and the paint is coming off the white edge. Judging from the forums on Apple's own website this is a major problem common to Powerbooks manufactured between the end of 2001 and Spring 2002. Apple's response has generally been to blame users for causing the problems such as their aftershave (!) reacting with the paint or watches scratching the painted surface. Consequently Apple says that the product is not defective and thus not covered by warranty.

Also, if memory serves me correct there were major problems with the case of the Powercube (or whatever it was called) cracking.

Most of the cases of the Cube case cracking were just people freaking out over seam lines from the mold. As for your paint coming off, well, it's painted titanium, not magic color-forged imaginanium. It's going to get worn, abused, and yeah, sometimes chip or scratch. If you'd rather have a cruddy black plastic case, go buy a Dell. Furthermore, chipping paint has nothing to do with the quality of components (if you need more help, that would be CPU, RAM, video cards, bus controllers, drives, etc.).

Do you need to be so rude?

Only on days that end in "y"

RichS,

This is a good example that it isn't from me, since you aren't in my address book. I assume we are both in the address book of the person who is infected.

Someone asked me for the gory details of what I had to do in order to check my XP system, so if anybody else is in that boat (and note that I took the opportunity to upgrade to NAV 2003):

1. Download the Klez search-and-clean tool.
2. Uninstall NAV 2002.
3. Uninstall Liveupdate.
4. Disable system restore and reboot.
5. Reboot XP in safe mode.
6. Run the Klez search-and-clean tool which scans the entire disk painfully
slowly.
7. Do the follow-up maintenance after the tool finished.
8. Reboot XP in normal mode.
9. Reinstall NAV 2002 (at which point I realized I was screwed because I had downloaded it and the instructions called for system disks, so...
10. Buy, download, and install NAV 2003 and reboot.)
11. Run NAV to scan harddrive again.
12. Do the follow-up maintenance after the scan and reboot.
13. Reinstall Live Update.
14. Re-enable system restore and reboot.

Man, after reading the posts on USCHO's message board, I did wish a nasty disease on some people, but this seems a bit ridiculous. almost as ridiculous as the unending Mac vs Windows debate....

-J