Windows Succeeds where Linux fails. 3691

Mike Cox

Actually, it's pretty well documented that NTFS support on Linux is limited at best. Writing to NTFS drives is risky, reading NTFS drives is possible, but still rather limited. The biggest problem is that NTFS uses multiple allocation tables, and they are redundant. Finding all of the clones and keeping them accurate, especially when the drive is full or nearly full, can be a bit of a challenging even for Windows.

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Yep. 80 bucks for a rescue tool, 80 bucks for a backup tool, 50 bucks for winzip, and so on. If you spend about $3,000, your can get a Windows system to do almost anything that Linux can do. There are 3,000 packages in the typical Linux distribution.

But then again, some of that functionality available to ALL Linux systems is available on Windows -------------------------------- Windows 2003.

Multiply these little packages times about 1,000 employees and you could bankrupt the company.

NTFS software!

GPL isn't communism or socialism. It just shifts the pricing and profit structure from "imaginary" value such as copyright royalties, to "real" values such as service, support, and customization.

There are far more similarities between Windows and Stalin's USSR, and far more similarities between Linux and the United States. In Windows, a single powerful individual, backed by extraordinarily loyal groups of devoted followers maintain iron fisted control of their domain, purging and nullifying and potential threats shortly after gaining access to their technology, but long before they can be any significant threat.

GPL is more like national forest land, which can be used by millions of tourists, campers, hunters, and other people for approved uses, yet retaining the owership and control of the land in a manner that prevents corporate or wealthy interests from destroying the resources which make the area desirable.

Imagine if George Bush were to put up strip malls, casinos, and a WalMart at every single location now considered a national forest campground! It might be nice for a few months, but the fires, crime, and private interests would pretty much make the resources useless and undesirable desert. Suddenly, the national forests would become a wasteland of desolation.

to recovery

There are lots of good commercial programs for Linux too. Many of them are versions of software originally written for UNIX. Linux has just made the port extraordinarily easy.

Many of the millions of functions and files written for Linux are actually reference models for commercial software which can still be purchased for corporate use. Linux has some cute accounting and CAD programs in the SuSE distribution, but there are some really outstanding accounting packages that would satisfy the needs of corporate accountants, and CAD programs that meet the demands of the highest calibre design engineers.

If you tried to put all of the commercial software on a DVD for Linux, and then tried to charge full price for every peice, it would cost a few million dollars per copy. A casual home user doesn't need a $300-seat stock trading system used by brokers. A student who wants to play video games doesn't need a fully functional flight simulator, complete with hydraulically suspended chamber.

The business traveller doesn't need the same weather forcasting software used by CNN and The Weather Channel.

A user searching his own hard drive doesn't need all of the capabilities of Google.

Linux gives the user several reference model implementations, but also provides users with the ability to obtain the specialty software that is most important to them commercially.

Something has "blessed" Bill Gates. Whether it's a Faustian deal that Bill Gates "renegotiated" or a blessing from the God of Goodness, Love, Justice, and fairness, the God described by Jesus, would be a more interesting observation. If anyone could out-bargain the Devil, and find a loophole in the contract, or create huge loopholes in last minute counteroffers, it would be Bill Gates.

though improve that software,

NTFS is a bear-trap of intellectual property hazards. There have been several people who have tried to write good NTFS drivers, but used proprietary and copyrighted information, so it could not be accepted.