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Technology Stocks : All About Sun Microsystems -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: cheryl williamson who wrote (18350)	7/30/1999 1:53:00 PM
From: QwikSand	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 64865

In fact, PowerPoint was a dog for years, with programs like Persuasion and Freelance way out in front. The first several releases of PowerPoint didn't have an outliner! Can you imagine a presentation program without an outliner? Well, that was PowerPoint, a true piece of crap. It won its current monopoly position not on quality, because it's still not as good as Persuasion was before it died. I still detest using it. PowerPoint won monopoly position based on nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing, but that fact that M$ started bundling it with other more widely-accepted Microsoft products. PowerPoint, which even today remains a mediocre presentation program, would have failed if forced to compete on its own. It was not forced to compete. Is PowerPoint the "best" these days? Maybe, because it's the "only" these days. I haven't used the StarDivision equivalent. Hopefully someday I will transition entirely to that. The Applix presentation program is an even worse dog than PowerPoint; but that's Unix for you. Regards, --QwikSand

To: cheryl williamson who wrote (18350)	7/31/1999 9:54:00 AM
From: Michael F. Donadio	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 64865

Cheryl, Here is another example of Microsoft's great security model: dailynews.yahoo.com Saturday July 31 09:00 AM EDT Hole opens Office 97 users to hijack Brett Glass, ZDNet UPDATED 7 AM PT 7/30/99 Juan Carlos G. Cuartango, who has previously exposed several serious security holes in Microsoft Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator, has once again found a nasty vulnerability in Microsoft Office and Internet Explorer. The hole, which is present on any Windows or NT system containing Version 3.51 of Microsoft's "Jet" database engine, allows an e-mail messageor Web page to execute an arbitrary command on the user's system. Thevulnerable version of the engine was shipped with Microsoft Office 97. It may also have been included with other Microsoft (Nasdaq:MSFT - news) products and development tools, and/or with third party applications. ... * Serious vulnerability According to Cuartango, the vulnerability is especially dangerous because it can be exploited remotely via the Internet. If a user with the vulnerability is running Microsoft Internet Explorer and visits a Web page with an embedded Office document (such as an Excel spreadsheet), viewing the document will allow arbitrary commands to be executed on that user's system. "If you visit [the] page," wrote Cuartango, "you are dead." ************************************* God's gift to presentations, Power Point, was also capable of creating this security breach. The message it sends you may not be the one you wanted. By the way Cheryl, I just wanted to say how much I've valued your sharp, focused, and insightful assessments of Sun's computing vision versus others such as Microsoft, HP, etc. over the years. It's clear to me that you are one of the "sharpest cookies"** around. All the best, Michael