In article , Bill Denton wrote:
That's simply not true in the least. Applications should not be able to
crash an OS. If it can, that's a serious OS bug. I would say that you've
been exposed to MS' OS a little too long without understanding what else
is out there.

I have seen applications crash NT workstation and server four or five times,
and I've crashed Win2K Professional twice; once with Flight Simulator.

Which means the OS has some serious bugs. Either that or bad drivers
(I've come across some hideously bad - I mean really inexcusably bad
video drivers).

As for Windows being easy to set up (you cited WfWG), Macintosh networks
were that easy to set up in 1988 - we had a Mac network at school then.
It's hardly Windows that has made setting up LANs easy. Setting up the
LAN isn't even quarter of the battle - keeping it up *and secure* is a
much bigger chunk of it. An easy GUI setup and few scripting tools, and
an insecure default configuration means that the easy set up has a
really nasty sting in the tail, as evidenced by the hundreds of
thousands of hosts listed in Spamhaus's XBL (Exploits Blacklist). You
need proper admins (i.e. ones you'll have to pay well) to keep your
network secure even if it runs Windows. Admins who know how to write
scripts to automate jobs. That kind of thing. Having some non-admin set
it up with the easy-to-use GUI is just a malware breeding ground.

--
Dylan Smith, Castletown, Isle of Man
Flying: http://www.dylansmith.net
Frontier Elite Universe: http://www.alioth.net
"Maintain thine airspeed, lest the ground come up and smite thee"