Farm Out! (was Re: Retribution not enough)

Harmon Seaver hseaver at cybershamanix.com
Tue Oct 23 09:42:27 PDT 2001


Tim May wrote:

> On Monday, October 22, 2001, at 11:05 PM, Harmon Seaver wrote:
> >      Ish! I'm getting bummed with NS, but wouldn't use IE on a bet. Why
> > use a
> > virus magnet?
>
> The virii are typically executables for x86/Windows machines, not Macs.
> You said you were using a Mac, so why do you think IE for the Mac
> exposes you to virii?

      I used to have a web page with a simple dos command that would
immediately crash any windoze machine running IE. While I realize that all
the viri and such are aimed at windoze boxes, not Macs, given the general
insecurity of IE in particular, and M$ products overall (for instance, Word
and others ID'ing you secretly in the documents) who knows what all it does?
I'm amazed, in fact, that someone like you, Tim, would use it. Do you know
for sure what it sends back to M$ central, or perhaps, gasp, even to the
fedz?

>
>
> >  But then, I don't use any other M$ product either, it's all
> > third rate.
>
> Religious nonsense. I tend to avoid MS products because I can get good
> alternatives for very little money, but few would call Microsoft Office
> "third rate." I've seen the version for OS X and it looks very good.
> Maybe "1.5" rate, but not second rate and surely not third rate.
>

       StarOffice is a lot better. Opensource, for one thing (although I
know the Mac version was dropped and the OS X version not quite ready yet,
but the linux version rocks), and doesn't get macroviri in any version.
Again, why would you use something that ID's everything you write? But if
you really want a great word processor, try XyWrite. Too bad the law firm
that bought it dropped the ball on development, but the Notabene version is
going strong, and is the ultimate wp AFAIC.  http://www.notabene.com/
No mac version, or linux version, but I run Xywrite under VirtualPC on the
Mac, and under VMware on linux.


--
Harmon Seaver, MLIS
CyberShamanix
Work 920-203-9633
Home 920-233-5820
hseaver at cybershamanix.com
http://www.cybershamanix.com/resume.html





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