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World's First XP System Sold
A reader writes "New zealands largest OEM PC Manufacturer, The PC Company sold the worlds first Windows XP system. Details can be found at this article on NZoom" And so, it begins.
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What do you mean first XP system? Iv'e been running XP for several wee- err, first *sold* XP system. Never Mind.
(The above is a complete falsity contrived to humor readers, any resemblence to actual people, places, or events is purely coincidental)
.
- "Scientia non habet inimicum nisp ignorantem"
Well, I suppose that if your imagination only runs to the extent of calling a PC company "The PC Company" its not suprising you'll be first in line for Mr Gate's latest.
Get the EULA T-shirt
Most legitimate users will violate the EULA, by connecting to more than 10 computers (somebody said Internet?), or by installing VNC (which is explictly prohibited - but works great nonetheless) or by doing of the many things M$ says you cannot do.
In short, you're better of pirating it.
[Disclaimer: This message is for humor only and does not encourage piracy in any way nor does imply any resemblance to real facts.]
Make even shorter URLs - 8LN.org
M$ NZ gets its first XP tech support cal after the user added a new harddrive and XP told them they'd have to get permission from M$ before they continued ... and so it begins ...
I'm actually serious - anyone?
it's in my head
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
Congratulations, you have passed slashdot's "you are a dumb insular American test"! Just kidding :-)
While Americans ignore most of the worlds sport and simply invent their own to have American World Champions, many countries play the same sports! This reference to "All Black" refers to the New Zealand Rugby Union team who are historically one of the most respected and best forces in Rugby. They are called All Blacks as their strip is all black! The press are mentioning this as it was obviously a publicity stunt by The PC Company to ensure greter coverage in their native NZ (and in fact it is a good enough gimmic to probably get some attention outside NZ). A quick look at a google search and this page also suggests Mr. Howlett might have been chosen as "the fastest man in NZ rugby". I guess we won't really know unless someone can show us the material The PC Company are putting out.
Never underestimate the dark side of the Source
generally, in the past, oem's have received new MS OS's some time before you can buy a non-oem version.
XP, basically being a polished 2k, is nice and stable - 12 days playing games, installing crap, uninstalling crap, hibernating almost every night and generally Doing Stuff isn't bad.
:)
I finally rebooted it when it took a worryingly long time to hibernate (this, to the uninitiated, involves writing all memory out to disk, suspending drivers etc so the system can come back up in it's original state) - which I think's fair enough, seeing as it's quite a large task to ask any OS to do.
XP also happens to boot very fast.. in fact, it's faster than coming out of hibernation here, and certainly comparible to an equivilent Unix system.
Most of the new GUI stuff's a bit crap, but you can turn it all off with ease. The KLIK[tm] support for networking's quite nice, with bridging, NAT etc available with a few mouseclicks. It even sets up a firewall when you set up networking, and (*shock* *horror*), it's actually quite good.
It performs at least as well as 2k, with tweaks in most of the right places, hence making it Quite Good[tm]. And it runs vim, UT, Q3 and CS - what more could you ask for?
MS has been giving out free copies of XP final, full retail, pro edition to pretty much every salesperson in computer stores across north america (i.e. the warez versions are the iso's of these discs). They had a fairly hot chick do the demonstration too, hell, I admit I'm shallow.
...)
MS also gave a crapload of stuff about why you should sell XP to your customers, etc, etc.
And yeah, MS is at the very least bold in some of the things they do.
How about this - before you log in, XP tells you whether you have passport mail waiting.
Buy music = goto microsoft music, digital pictures -> MS.
Allow tech support (or others) remote control of your PC? You have to be using messenger (or at least, that is what is built in) This ought to be fun when an exploit is discovered. Full system takeover is possible.
Especially optimized for P4 (MS and intel, sitting in a tree, k.i.s.s.i.n.g
No fucking AOL (which, as a DSL tech support agent is music to my ears)
Built in firewall (shitty one though)
Built in ICS
Built in passport games...
No apparant way to remove messenger.
The happy registration (which has already been cracked quite completely)
Essentially what MS is doing is creating a computer software system (aka turnkey solution) in a box. Joe user won't have to buy anything else for his pc if he buys xp. I'm sure a lot of third party vendors are going to be pissed because they won't have a market for their products, but then again, geeks never bitched when MS included undelete w/MS Dos 5.
On the upside,
MS finally got rid of netbeui, so your network file transfers won't be slow as shit over the network.
MS made the gui skinnable (almost exactly like windows blinds)
hibernate ACTUALLY WORKS (third times a charm)
it seems to actually be running stable (uptime 1 month, with my parents on it, which means _alot_, i.e. the system has not gone down since I installed it on an overclocked celeron box),
added a change user function, which allows the system
added the ability to "telnet" in and logon using the remote machines cpu power, ala X-Windows. Essentially terminal services on every machine.
It looks fischer price, and I hate to say it, but MS might of have done what they promised to do when they release Windows 95. The price is insane though, $300US for full pro edition!!!!!
Oh. If you work in a computer store and want a free (legal) copy, florida (24,25,26), texas (24, colorado(15),az(24), still have seminars going. Check
http://www.microsoft.com/retail/live/
though its kinda late. Proof of employment can be a tshirt w/ a name badge. See the evil for yourself.
Well, gnight.
1q2w3e4r5t6y7u8i9o0pqawsedrftgthyjukilo;p'azsxdcf
Indeed it is a sad world when a software company would dare to violate our civil liberties by designing an operating system that is hard to pirate.
Thoughtless bastards - what next, people fitting 'locks' on doors to make it harder for burglars? Selfish fuckers.
Windows XP runs EVERYTHING at root, which means every program (and even the trojans hidden within that program) has full access to all Windows services
Pigs arse everything runs as root. When you create a new user, it asks you whether the user is a admin or regular user. Regular users are NOT root.
And for more control, you can fire up the Users and Groups MMC, and put users in appropriate groups, and set appropriate permissions.
Who the hell is this Cringely dolt?
No, not really. Idiots with slightly improved accuracy are still idiots.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
(Specifically, it lists five text fields into which usernames are entered - these users do not get passwords unless you change the way in which login is handled. This is for the Windows XP Professional install, and not Home Edition - Home Edition probably does the same thing, though. I haven't really found there to be a big difference between Home Edition and Professional. (Although admittably this was RC2, but feature changes were not slated at that point, so it probably holds true with the release builds.))
Which probably means that unless the OEMs take action to make sure Joe Consumer's XP box doesn't create Administrator (root) accounts when they first start up their new PC, the average consumer will be running every program as root.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
it could make time run backwards as you suggest :)
--- Hot Shot City is particularly good.
From the article: And so, it begins.
Don't you really mean: The avalanche has already started. It is too late for the pebbles to vote.
Those who would give up liberty in exchange for security and DRM should switch to Microsoft Palladium!
Here's some code for you to run:
int main(int argc, char* argv[])
{
SOCKET s;
WSADATA wsadata;
WSAStartup(MAKEWORD(2,2), &wsadata);
s = WSASocket(AF_INET, SOCK_RAW, IPPROTO_IP, NULL, 0, 0);
printf("%d\n", s);
SOCKADDR from;
int fromlen = sizeof(from);
struct sockaddr_in to;
ZeroMemory(&from, sizeof(from));
ZeroMemory(&to, sizeof(from));
char buf[4096];
to.sin_family = AF_INET;
to.sin_addr.S_un.S_addr = 0x0100007F;
to.sin_port = 0;
int sb = sendto(s, buf, 0, 0, (SOCKADDR *)&to, sizeof(to));
DWORD sbe = GetLastError();
int cb = recvfrom(s, buf, sizeof(buf), 0, &from, &fromlen);
DWORD cbe = GetLastError();
printf("%d, %d\n", sb, cb);
printf("%d, %d\n", sbe, cbe);
closesocket(s);
scanf("\n");
}
When you run as an admin, it works. When you run as a non-admin you get an error (EACCESS) trying to send or receive from the raw socket.
To put it simply, GRC is lying to you for the purposes of selling his own products and you got suckered. The rules for raw sockets are exactly the same as on Win2k and Linux - you gotta be root.
Fear: When you see B8 00 4C CD 21 and know what it means
The significant differences between Linux and Windows XP are very few. They aren't worth arguing. You can say "Oh, but the Linux kernel is prettier!" but it doesn't matter when both OSes are rock solid. And the stability of a PC OS mostly comes down to drivers as it. Run Linux with a poor video driver and you'll have endless headaches. Ditto for Windows XP. You can say that Windows XP is bloated and slow, but you can say the same of Linux + XWindows + KDE/Gnome as well.
So it all comes down to Windows XP being a Microsoft product and Linux being free, and that there is some software you can only get for one or the other. That's about all you can argue, though most people don't care.