wieser@fsd.cpsc.ucalgary.ca (Bernhard Wieser) (01/01/91)
Greetings people: A rather nifty thing happened this morning... I compiled a program, tried to stuffit with StuffIt classic (just got it), and it comes up and tells me that said program is 'possibly' infected with ZUC. Disinfectant 2.3 says it is clean. Anyone have any ideas? Thanks. -- ( Bernie Wieser, wieser@cpsc.ucalgary.ca, BSWieser@uncamult.BITNET ) ( 4rth Year Dbl.Mgr Cpsc Clhc University of Calgary | ) ( S/H Developer Dept. of Psychology, " " " \|/ ) ( Octavian Micro Development Group --- o --- )
bytebug@dhw68k.cts.com (Roger L. Long) (01/01/91)
In article <1990Dec31.191216.22049@cpsc.ucalgary.ca> Bernhard Wieser writes: >I compiled a program, tried to stuffit with StuffIt classic (just got it), >and it comes up and tells me that said program is 'possibly' infected with >ZUC. Disinfectant 2.3 says it is clean. Anyone have any ideas? Get Disinfectant 2.4. From its release notes: Version 2.4 detects the new B strain of the ZUC virus, recently discovered in Italy. -- Roger L. Long bytebug@dhw68k.cts.com
wieser@fsd.cpsc.ucalgary.ca (Bernhard Wieser) (01/02/91)
Greetings, and thanks to those who mailed me responses: On good advice, I took Disinfectant 2.4 and ran it. It says my system is clean. (I practice safe computing ;-) However, the situation is like this: My application compiled with MacsBug headers causes StuffIt classic to warn me I possibly have ZUC. Without headers, no problems. I believe it is Classic's fault; no other program I've tried seems to do this. Anyone who wants the program to snoop may do so: it is a uuencode/decode utility; I'll mail it out on request. -- ( Bernie Wieser, wieser@cpsc.ucalgary.ca, BSWieser@uncamult.BITNET ) ( 4rth Year Dbl.Mgr Cpsc Clhc University of Calgary | ) ( S/H Developer Dept. of Psychology, " " " \|/ ) ( Octavian Micro Development Group --- o --- )
wnn@ornl.gov (Wolfgang N. Naegeli) (01/02/91)
In article <1991Jan1.194130.6480@cpsc.ucalgary.ca> wieser@fsd.cpsc.ucalgary.ca (Bernhard Wieser) writes: > I believe it is Classic's fault; no other program I've tried seems to > do this. What's happened with StuffIt? The nets seem to be loaded with messages in recent month about people having troubles and wasting hours upon hours because of StuffIt Delux, and now with StuffIt Classic. When StuffIt first became popular, there was little doubt that it was the best compression utility for the Mac. It's user interface always was ugly, but it did do more or less what it claimed it would do. For a shareware product, some quirks and bugs didn't upset most users. But when it went commercial, users felt they had a right to expect more. It seems they got more features and more problems, and dismal technical support. Virtually all comparisons I have seen indicate that none of the various versions of StuffIt offer a ratio of compression per unit of time spent that comes even close to most of its newer competitors. If you add all the wasted time because of installation problems, incompatibilities, false virus alerts, and cumbersome manipulations to create and manipulate archives, the performance of StuffIt is really the pits. Unfortunately, StuffIt Delux and Compactor are essentially threading in the old rut of an antiquated user interface. Compactor at least does it with admirable speed. Diamond and DiskDoubler have rethought the user interface. Both are more elegant, but Diamond's solution is not convincing because it things don't seem to be quite intuitive either. And it too has wasted user's time by locking up archives that were ligitimately created with the demo version, without warning users that such problems could occur. DiskDoubler is very intuitive to use, the most elegant of the crop, and on the average competes very well in therms of compression and speed with its competitors. Technical support also is outstanding. Apple Computer has bought a worldwide site license to use it internally. I am puzzled that DiskDoubler hardly ever is mentioned on the net. Of course, people don't complain about what they like. But my gut feeling is that DiskDoubler has a fairly small market share. One would expect that Macintosh users are picky about technology and would reject inferior solutions. But then too, I can't figure out why such large numbers of Mac users accept all the incompatible and cumbersome stuff that Microsoft throws their way. ************************************************************** Wolfgang N. Naegeli Internet: wnn@ornl.gov Bitnet: wnn@ornlstc Phone: 615-574-6143 Fax: 615-574-6141 (MacFax) QuickMail (QM-QM): Wolfgang Naegeli @ 615-574-4510 ************************************************************** Disclaimer: The above are my personal opinions.
cox@stpstn.UUCP (Brad Cox) (01/03/91)
In article <1991Jan1.194130.6480@cpsc.ucalgary.ca> wieser@fsd.cpsc.ucalgary.ca (Bernhard Wieser) writes ... of virus warnings when decompacting files with
Stuffit classic.
I've repeatedly received Stuffit warnings from files that check clean
with VirusDetective, Disinfectant, Gatekeeper, and anything else that's
available.
I've concluded that Stuffit warns on the slightest provocation,
and should therefore be ignored.
--
Brad Cox; cox@stepstone.com; CI$ 71230,647; 203 426 1875
The Stepstone Corporation; 75 Glen Road; Sandy Hook CT 06482jimb@silvlis.com (Jim Budler) (01/03/91)
In article <1991Jan2.155637.14687@cs.utk.edu> wnn@ornl.gov (Wolfgang N. Naegeli) writes: >What's happened with StuffIt? The nets seem to be loaded with messages in >recent month about people having troubles and wasting hours upon hours >because of StuffIt Delux, and now with StuffIt Classic. I think Stuffit got a bad case of featuritus, otherwise known as creeping featurism. Stuffit 0-1.5.1 was the product of one very fertile mind, Raymond Lau. Stuffits since then are a product of a team, or committee. Then you add competition... Look at the timelines: 1. Stuffit Deluxe 1.0 comes out 1a. Compactor, Diamond, Disk Doubler come out. 2. Users notice that {Compactor|Diamond|Disk Doubler} are {faster| compact better|easier to use}. Or all of the above. 3. Stuffit Classic 1.6 (shareware) comes out. 4. Users notice that Stuffit Classic 1.6 (shareware) is faster and has features the commercial version does not (self extracting archives). 5. Stuffit Deluxe 2.0 is announced. (not delivered, though "wait 'til you see it" beta messages abound) Editorial Opinions and Questions: I think 12-18 months from now we'll have some mature, good UI, fast efficient space conservers and archivers available. Who will they be? The winners of this short race, of course. My humble opinion is that Salient will still be there. As to Stuffit? They have to improve their compression technology. Compactor? Bill Goodman has excellent compression technology but lacks some features. He's a one man show. Can he catch up on features while not losing competitive edge in compression technology? Diamond? I live and work in Silicon Valley, and I've never seen a copy of this available for sale. I inhabit Compuserve and GEnie. Ditto. Maybe they were all sold out before I got to the store? Either that or their distribution channels are gonna kill them. Obviously I can have no opinion on their technology, or user interface, or features. For the record, I own Disk Doubler and Compactor. I've used Stuffit 1.5.1 for years to decompress downloads. I've managed to install Unstuffit Deluxe, but guess what? It doesn't answer double-clicks on Stuffit 1.5.1 archives, and I hear it can't open some types of optimized Stuffit Deluxe archives. Meanwhile, I use Disk Doubler for on-line storage, and Compactor for off-line storage, and hope I can decode the new stuffits coming down the wire. >DiskDoubler is very intuitive to use, the most elegant of the crop, and on >the average competes very well in therms of compression and speed with its >competitors. Technical support also is outstanding. Apple Computer has >bought a worldwide site license to use it internally. Intuitive: great; Elegant: yes; Compression technology: better than Stuffit, but not as good as Compactor. Technical Support is still excellent. I have the feeling it will drop in the near future (sales skyrocket, you can only install phone lines and people to answer them at a fixed rate), I hope their priorities are such that they will catch up in not to distant future. >I am puzzled that DiskDoubler hardly ever is mentioned on the net. Of >course, people don't complain about what they like. But my gut feeling is >that DiskDoubler has a fairly small market share. I don't think the reason is any of the above. DiskDoubler, although using compression technologies, is primarily an online space saver, not an archiver. Yes I know it has a combine function which places all the contents of a folder in a file , but since it doesn't allow me to add into an archive, or selectively extract from an archive it isn't an archiver. That's why I own both it and Compactor. And that's why I think DiskDoubler isn't mentioned much here on Usenet, because it isn't an archiver. > One would expect that >Macintosh users are picky about technology and would reject inferior >solutions. Wrong! A majority of Macintosh users use it because it's easier and requires less training. i.e. a majority of Macintosh users are *less* computer literate than other computer users. That's the point of the easy user interface. > But then too, I can't figure out why such large numbers of >Mac users accept all the incompatible and cumbersome stuff that Microsoft >throws their way. Well, I said they were less computer literate, didn't I? 8^) Seriously, the computer literate and power users among the Macintosh users are as powerful as their platform allows. I being, I think, one of them feel that the Macintosh platform is as powerful in concept and scope as any existing. I'll probably hear from some NeXTofile on that, but I was talking about real consumer computers ( "real consumer computer" == shipping > 1000 per day. "real consumer computer" != maybe shipping > 1000 per month ). But my point is that the *majority* of Mac users are less computer literate than the computer users of any other computer's users. Thus we can expect them to buy from the big guys instead of evaluating their options fully. > >Wolfgang N. Naegeli In summary (did you even bother to read this far?) I believe: Today the most efficient archiver is Compactor. Today the most intuitive on-line space saver is DiskDoubler. Today Diamond has a distribution/marketing problem, at least. Today Stuffit is deeply caught up in the conversion from a one man part-time enterprise to a team based commercial enterprise. In the long run we the users will not lose. Most of the participants in this battle are commited to supporting the past: Stuffit supports: Stuffit 1.5.1, Packit, BinHex4 Compactor supports: Stuffit 1.5.1 DiskDoubler supports: Stuffit 1.5.1, Packit In the short run some of us will have spent extra money. Uhm, well a pity, but, I guess, "So what?". I bought a Poly88 computer instead of an Apple in 1976 ( date unsure ). I decided the Poly88 was a better computer and more complete than the Apple (It was). So what? Where's Polymorphic Systems today? Where's Apple? Sounds like a non-sequitor(sp?) doesn't it? Not really. Compression technology is a happening. Sun Microsystems now distributes there operating systems in compressed files. Modems now compress on the fly. Before very long operating systems will no longer store images on disk, they will store compressed images on disk. My money spent on compression technology today, whether on Stuffit, Compactor, or DiskDoubler, will be lost money. Except whatever use I had in the meantime! No wars necessary. Even the people who want to decode archives on foreign platforms only need to wait. I've already seen claims of disk librarians which can scan disks containing Stuffit Deluxe and Compactor archives and list table of contents for both. Sorry I spoke so long... jim -- __ __ / o / Jim Budler jimb@silvlis.com | Proud / / /\/\ /__ Silvar-Lisco, Inc. +1.408.991.6115 | MacIIsi /__/ / / / /__/ 703 E. Evelyn Ave. Sunnyvale, Ca. 94086 | owner