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Sales of the machine and its software have failed to make any impact on the market at all.

The Windows registry on NT is provided by the Configuration Manager, a kernel mode executive subsystem. The CM exports its own type of object, the Key object, which is handled like any other type of kernel object. A registry key consists of an ACL, a set of values, and a set of subkeys arragned in a hierarchy. Each non-volaitle key is backed by a file, known as a registry hive; subkeys can be stored in the same hive as the parent or be mounted from a different one. Hives are opened and locked by the kernel and are journalled to prevent corruption.

/etc uses the filesystem database to store configuration groups directly and different formats for each type of file to store entries. Security is provided for each file.
The registry uses a specialized database that is aware of each line of data; it provides enough metadata to distinguish between strings and integers and binary data, providing a string label for each item. Security is provided for each key.
Although you can arrange keys and values any way you like, key level security usually provides a lot more granularity than file level. The standard config consumer on UNIX has one file for config, even if there are many entries. The standard on Windows is to give each app a base key which can contain as many securable subkeys as needed.

Both are databases. Given the choice between a general purpose format that leaves the details up to each client to re-invent and a specialized database designed specifically for configuration, which one sounds better? Which one is easier to use in a standardized way?

Good job, Steve will probably hear about this tomorrow and start firing people working security.

The odds of WU getting hacked are pretty slim as surely Microsoft concentrates all its security efforts there

Sure, I'd trust them...

No-one is beyond reach....

Well to start off I was busy at work earlier when I posted the last message, but felt the need for a quick response, so I'll try my best to formulate a good argument this time so that I don't dissapoint you.

WinNT kernel was made right our of a UNIX kernel.
The NT kernel did not originate from unix, it originated from OS/2 and even before that, VMS which was another non portable OS that was developed for VAX machines. The only link I can possible link I can find from unix to NT is that NT's chief architect, David Cutler, originally designed OS's for PDP-11's, which is what UNIX's first release was designed on. David designed the RSX-11M OS on the PDP-11 which would later be incorperated into the NT kernel. From there David went on to become one of the initial developers for VMS which was the OS for VAX machines. From there he went on to be the cheif architect for the NT project at microsoft. You can read the full origins of the NT kernel here. Now as you can see that in no way makes NT any sort of decendent of UNIX.

It was (The original one, WinNT 3.51) almost POSIX
Calling it almost POSIX is a far stretch, the initial idea of NT was to support for portions of the DOS, OS/2, and POSIX API's, which you can also see in that posted article.

Memory allocation you are describing is the stuff a 5 years old would write.
This proves my point, the MS kernels don't keep good enough track of memory to avoid this problem, which can lead to escalated privilege exploits, not to mention programs just flat out crashing, or the entire system crashes (BSOD?). To say its only in code a 5 year old would right is just stupid. Any programmer knows that it's easy to make mistakes, and granted it's harder to make this mistake than most others, it still does happen, especially when you've been working on some code for 16 hours straight. The linux kernel on the other hand seems to have a much more advanced paging system that won't allow this to happen.

"so often after a crash, windows wont free up all the memory that it as using" which is so irrelevant (Because even if it happenned, and it does because of Shared Memory
I won't try and argue this point as I don't have any facts other than my experience with windows to back it up, the only reason I mentioned it in the first place was because as I was typing my comment, my mail client in linux started going nuts, taking up a bunch of memory and cpu utilization; closing it fixed it, and I was just thinking that if that had of happened in windows, my system would still probally be all lagged, which is actually probally more of a case of defunct windows system process's such as rundll.

The strange thing is that Windows XP is an indirect descendant of the OS that probably is running on those VAX systems with those giant swinging uptimes. The story goes that back in the day, the Windows NT team had a large number of VMS vetrans on board, and that there was more than a little bit of code in common between VMS and Windows NT. The story is actually kinda interesting; you can read about it here.

The urban legend is that Windows NT is so called because if you "add" one letter to each of VMS, you get WNT (like with HAL and IBM). And then if you're feeling snarky, you say something like "see, you had to know that the NT couldn't stand for new technology." But you probably shouldn't expect anyone to laugh.

I dont see anyone remembering Microsoft's massive investment in Comcast. We cant have any PRO-LINUX media types spewing free speech about the advantages of non-Microsoft products. 1. You cant kill an idea. (OpenSource Linux) Proprietary API's arent working. Litigation isnt working. 2. Invest in Media Outlets Control the public's information input. 3. Ties neatly into all Media distribution, read the news about Comcast's plan to control your LAN. 4. They will control your ability to learn about opposing software and soon even the ability to obtain it. Throw media into that as well. Here's a link about the investment of 1 BILLION dollars.

Mainframe OS eh ? sounds an awful lot like VMS ... err windows NT.

Old school fool

Here's a short list: For lying and stealing DOS For stealing code from Stac Electronics For stealing the NT kernel destroying Netscape via monopoly tactics even if AOL caved in. For pulling the same crap with Real Networks For ripping off customers and makeing "90%+ margins" on what is Insecure by Design. Seriously. I know we live in an Enron world and any given company is about as honest as the politicians they buy off, but just look at the track record. These guys are serious slimeballs. Period. And the list above doesn't even cover how they screwed over Apple, used university resources in the early days to pursue a commercial venture.

Sorry, but you're wrong. Windows NT has its architectural roots in VMS, not MS-DOS.

And since you're in need of a history lesson: the RTM worm spread via email (sort of) on Unix systems, and several Unix/Linux virus and worms have been discovered in the wild - Lion which spreads via a vulnerability in BIND, Bliss which infects ELF executables, Sadmind aka PoizonBox which targets both Solaris/sadmind and Windows/IIS, Staog, etc. Lindose can infect both ELF and PE executables but it's only a proof of concept.

Hell, there were even a few worms and trojans running around on VMS back in the day.

When written by noobs, virus/worms/trojans are a popularity contest, nothing more. When written by those skilled in the art, malicious mobile code is about risk management, engineering costs, and return on investment. Thus endeth the lesson.

*plonk*

(I was going to moderate this guy's post up, but since no one else has educated this newbie, I guess I'll have to leave the positive moderation to someone else.)

Oh, you mean thay shouldn't have settled with Digital then?

Borrowed? Funny word for it. See this article for some details. For a long time the Mica story was buried.

Does Windows have a net-based install that only requires a couple of floppies to get going?

If your computer has a PXE-enabled NIC you don't even need floppies to do your net-based install of Windows. It's called RIS. Still, most folks prefer to Ghost. But see here for a discussion of a voice-activated RIS-based install of Windows.

Found an article (I love MS google) about this, doesn't look like the poster will have any luck the article mentioned hardware changes were needed.

Sun hides nothing when it bundles software and gives credit where it is due. They do this with Apache, Perl, Java, X Windows, and the Berkeley UNIX compatibility tools, for example. The user is never forced to use these tools, but they certainly may choose to.

the NT source code was (illegally!) based on "Micah" the operating system that Dave Cutler was working on at DEC before he moved to MSFT in 1988

Cutler was working on a new hardware system called Prism and its new object-oriented operating system was called Mica (not "Micah"). The following article has more details, plus some "startling" comparisons of VMS and NT implementation details.

Windows NT and VMS: The Rest of the Story: Is NT really new technology?

> can't remember if the proper name for the original mk was Mica or Prism

Microsoft oriented press usually have little regard for jornalistic quality standards, but as far as I remember this article is correct: Prism was the hardware, Mica the OS for Digital’s ‘future system’ that failed, prompting Cutler to go work at Microsoft. Interesting that these ‘future systems’ have a tendency of going seriously wrong: IBM’s gave us SQL instead of relational, and that is worse than Windows!.

My comments were slightly speculative, but I did run a google search on q=ntfs+veritas. Windows .NET magazine discusses Veritas' envolvement of writing the built-in volume management (dynamic disks) aspect of NTFS5, which sounds reasonable. Here's a complete quote from Windows 2000 magazine,

VERITAS has contributed more to Windows 2000 than you might imagine. The company wrote important parts of the Windows file system, contributed elements of the Volume Manager software (VxVM, a light version of the Microsoft Management Console--MMC--snap-in that all Windows system administrators use), and--through its acquisition of Seagate's software assets--added Windows Backup (a light version of Backup Express)

While my co-worker's personal experience using the Outlook in a well supported fortune 500 corporate envionment is hardly scientific evidence, it's the one I trust. They got burnt. You can sit here and spew all the praise on MicroSquish you want, I'm going to believe my lying eyes.

You are welcome to search through the pile of Microsoft poop the search provides if you are really interested in finding a statistical study. Good luck.

I've given up trying. I print important email, knowing that my mail client is unreliable. As one person put it, "I use my computer like toilet paper. It's what the company gives us." Oh well, the company could throw all the puters out the window if it wanted to, it would make about as much sense as paying for the denial of service that Microsoft provides.

I don't think you get it.

Slashdot is a site from the (tech)people for the (tech)people, that's why it gets a hell of a lot of typos, comments, double-posts, discussions, flamewars and bias.

I am really happy that there are still sites not controlled by huge corps.

Of course this is a hard concept for some people.

If you love to look at sites with no typos, no comments, no double-posts, no discussions, no flamewars and a more subtile form of bias, why don't you go here or here

On those sites there is no need to tell people to shut up, because people don't get to speak at all.

About the only ways to get post-60's/70's into most backend business systems is to either start with it (still get same out-of-date problem in five, ten or fifteen years) or to have the higher-ups declare that a particular system will be used. Too bad a lot of Linux companies are getting a bad rap. If the hype had kept going, a lot of higher-ups would probably have switched to *Open Source* systems just to be the first in their country club to have all-Linux accounting department.

Sorry about the cynicism but I've worked with migrating few small inventory and accounting systems to something from the 90's and none of them were pretty from the personal or technical point of view. Sometimes it's all about culture.

Here's a starting point for you to consider: "The Orange Book C2 specification is for standalone, nondistributed computing environments and non-networked devices."
There's no security without physical security and a floppy/CD attached to a computer giving you a workaround from the single pathflow of username/password login to an ACL-controlled environment fails the C2 spec by default. No one brags about Orange Book certifications because no one enforces it because it's freaking useless in every conceivable work environment. No network + no disk drives == no sneakernet == why bother?

1. Set a filter that sends "legal" mailing lists to your mailing list folder.
2. Set another filter that sends friends/family/work/etc to their own folders.
   
3. Anything else (spam) gets dumped in the Inbox.

------

If you have O2002, you can do something similar by whitelisting. "Whitelisting is the opposite of blacklisting. Whereas the latter bans messages from certain senders, whitelisting accepts mail from specific senders."

"The new feature is an additional Rules Wizard condition: "sender is in Address Book," where you choose the address book--I've chosen my Contacts folder. For a message from a sender found in my Contacts folder, the rule applies a "known sender" category and stops processing the message. The "stop processing" action ensures that the message stays in my Inbox. Another rule at the bottom of the list moves everything that previous rules didn't handle into my Junk Mail folder for later review."

How do you do this with PINE/procmail? I'd like to stop using Outlook.

Try looking in the "Windows" section of the Reading Room from SANS website.

Specific articles of interest are:

Encrypting File System Primer , from July 6, 2001

and

Windows 2000 Encrypting File System , from July 27, 2000.

Both of these articles are heavily referenced with links to other techincal source material about Windows EFS. Most notably:

Mark Russinovich, "Inside Encrypting File System, Part 1", June 1999, Windows 2000 Magazine

Mark Russinovich, "Inside Encrypting File System, Part 2", July 1999, Windows 2000 Magazine.

This auto satisfy any questions about the limited protection offered by EFS in stand-alone and default modes, as well as provide direction for configuring EFS to operate with a very decent level of confidentiality and availability.

Try looking in the "Windows" section of the Reading Room from SANS website.

Specific articles of interest are:

Encrypting File System Primer , from July 6, 2001

and

Windows 2000 Encrypting File System , from July 27, 2000.

Both of these articles are heavily referenced with links to other techincal source material about Windows EFS. Most notably:

Mark Russinovich, "Inside Encrypting File System, Part 1", June 1999, Windows 2000 Magazine

Mark Russinovich, "Inside Encrypting File System, Part 2", July 1999, Windows 2000 Magazine.

This auto satisfy any questions about the limited protection offered by EFS in stand-alone and default modes, as well as provide direction for configuring EFS to operate with a very decent level of confidentiality and availability.

Agreed. Bad telnet. Bad, bad telnet.

Happily, info and resources for SSH appear to be increasingly commonplace. Haven't looked at the email link posted above, but just to be sure that you have more information than you want...the OpenBSD journal also recently pointed to an article here:

http://www.win2000mag.com/Articles/Index.cfm?Artic leID=21992

...that walks through setting up OpenSSH on a Win2k box.

Sort of... it compiles to VB bytecode, not to machine language.

Native Code Compilation
The feature developers requested most in VB 5.0 is the ability to compile source code to natively execuTable code. VB 5.0 uses the same two-pass compilation process as Visual C++. The first pass parses the code and generates a preprocessed interim format; the second pass optimizes and generates native code. VB 5.0 supports several of the same compiler options as VC++.

The average cleanup takes a couple minutes. Are NT admins really paid that well, or are they just very slow?

BTW, when is the NT version of Code Red coming out? Seems like it should have a much larger audience of forgotten and neglected servers.

OK.
NTFS sucks. Based on... benchmarks? research? security? anything?

The problem with Winnt, the files don't have ownership so anybody with any type of an account can modify them.

Like I already said, NT has file-level permissions, so that isn't true. And, not to reference the API you seem to hate, but here is proof that you can take ownership of objects (files and directories) in NT.

All OSes should have a command shell of some type, the more advanced the better, then later:If the actual OS is 5 megs, it'll be more useful then something that is 650 megs. So, advanced as possible, but also as small as possible... how does that work? One or the other, just like I tell marketing.

I like GUIs but they should never be integrated with the OS...

OK, but that's your opinion. Mac users would probably beg to differ, since they love that integration, and hate the CL. Nobody can really prove that GUI/OS integration is bad. It's really just an opinion.
(I should be able to boot directly to the command shell and be able to start the GUI as needed.)

You can, in Win2K. Ouch.

I don't like the WIN32 api, anything but that. If it was more like an advanced QT api, it would be great.

OK, so in what ways is the QT API better than WIN32? You don't say in your post, so should I assume you don't know? Is it the mysterious "Miscellaneous" classes that add all the value?

OSes must also have seperate configuration files for individual programs. No stupid registry where an accidental crash can lead to all of your configuration being destroyed instead of a few.

Although MS has provided the registry, it is developers that store information there. They could just as easily use .cfg files or .ini files or whatever. I agree that the registry causes problems, but it's not meant to be accessed manually, only programatically, and if more "Power Users" took that advice, it wouldn't crash so much. Also, you are free to use whatever config system you want in anything you write for Windows.

The OS should be limited to controlling basic physical[...]That is it.

Once again, says you. What makes an OS differs from person to person. The DOJ said IE is a part of Windows, where as most don't think a window manager is a part of LINUX. It all depends on where you draw the line. The NT microkernel contained on the NT rescue disk fits on a floppy, and contains enough OS to manipulate the filesystem. Most wouldn't call this a full OS, although some might. You need facts to back up why you think your opinions are true. Also, a filesystem and an OS are two different things. Keep that in mind.

If it does more then this, it is inflated with unnecessary features that slow the computer and boot time down.

Since when is boot time the only measure of a system's functionality. Ever watch an HP3000 or '9000 boot up? Takes ages. No-one calls them bloated, they know the machine is just doing its job, and live with the boot time.

Anyway, come with more facts in hand, and we can really talk.

Click here for a platform independent windows emulator

I guarentee it works just like real thing.

Actually back in 1997, Microsoft did release version 3.5 of WindowsNT for the PowerPC. Motorola, which at the time was also a MacOS licencee, shiped a PowerPC computer that ran NT. A good article describing the details behind this change is located in Windows2000 magazine. The bigger question, of course, is why anyone would want to run a server operating system other than some variant of Unix?

One of the Fundamental differences between all Unixes and every other OS ever invented is the use of memory to buffer the filesystem.

Actually, disk caching is NOT a unique idea at all.

Macs have supported a disk cache for performance since at least System 3.0, in 1986. You can see a history of the old Mac OS here. However, I'm not sure if this is a read cache only and what form of cache writing scheme it supports if any nowdays.

While I can't really say about the DOS-based Windows variants, the NT versions of the Win32 API has lots of support for asynchronous file I/O. By default, all normal disk writes are written to a disk cache which is lazily flushed. You can specify certain options when opening a file handle with Cre ateFile() to force it to write straight through to disk rather than lazily cache it. In fact NT gets its asynchronous packet-based I/O subsystem design from VMS. (The designers of the NT kernel were ex-VMS designers.)

Finally, while I can't speak about the Amiga, I can speak about MVS's descendant OS, OS/390, which can handle asynchronous file I/O. I can't find you a good link, but most of the references I could find on this talk about OS/390's UNIX services. Apparently around release 2 of OS/390, they began to comply to the XOpen definition of a UNIX, so I guess that doesn't help that much.

BTW, for your 'detailed description', read this Windows2000 Magazine article.