Why Does Windows Still Suck?

RatBastard writes "SF Gate's Mark Morford asks: Why Does Windows Still Suck? After wtaching his significant other's Windows PC drown in a sea of viruses and worms after only 4 minutes on her new DSL connection, Mark Morford wonders why the masses have not stormed Redmond waving torches and scythes in anger over the never-ending security flaws in Windows. Why haven't they jetisoned the foul beast from Redmond and migrated en mass to the Macintosh or even Linux?"

Comments

Why?

[JNighthawk]

I'm a gamer.

Re:Why?

[spectre_240sx]

Apparently you don't work in a helpdesk type of job. Personally, I see a huge amount of people frustrated with windows and spyware every day. Tell them that windows is a good operating system. Honestly, I could probably sell every one of these people a macintosh, but unfortunately the place I work sells custom built PC's so it's not an option for me to point them to the lighter side.

Re:Why?

[spectre_240sx]

Ok, so maybe I should have mentioned that I manage about 40 macs as well, and nothing ever really goes wrong with them. My time in those areas is usually spent doing setup and helping with pebkac associated problems. We did have some trouble with our internet access for a while, but it usually had something to do with a windows user on our network who had a computer infected with spyware that was spewing out bad packets or something.

Re:Common sense, for the love of Pete...

[Lehk228]

unplug ethernet > boot up > enable windows firewall > plug in ethernet > windows update > reboot

Cracks in the wall....

[KMSelf]

I'd just submitted the same item, but with some additional background...

Moreford isn't the only person noting crap quality of Microsoft. The New York Times saw fit to run 2300 words on erasing a hard drive and reinstalling the OS, to terminate spyware with extreme prejudice. I mean, when was nuking your C:\ drive national news? A few months earlier, I was interviewed for an expose of the adware/spyware industry in Barbiarians at the Digital Gates. My own technical followup, Spyware, Adware, Windows, GNU/Linux, and Software Culture has garnered a number of responses, most variations of "why do people put up with this cr*p?!"

Even the local small-town paper's usually Microsoft partisan columnist is suggesting it's time for the Microsoft Empire to begin to crumble. And he's not the only one.

The point is that these aren't geeks and gearheads talking out, it's the current in the popular press. Ordinary people. Which wouldn't be so significant if there weren't clearly identifiable, far better alternatives. Linux. Mac OS X. ABMS - Anything but Microsoft.

I think we're finally seeing the ediface crumble.

Anyone remember the Windows Refund effort?

[KiltedKnight]

There was an attempt to get money refunded because people said that they didn't want Windows pre-installed. The way to get the refund was to take the computer out of the box, put a different OS installation disk in, and install the new OS, completely nuking Windows off the machine. With this done, you could get a refund of the cost of Windows, because you did not accept the terms of the EULA.

When you tried to do this, companies would say that you needed to contact Microsoft for the refund. Microsoft would say you needed to contact the computer seller. Once you finished running around in circles, you found out that it only cost the manufacturer about $1.00 to put the copy of Windows on that machine, and that's what you'd have refunded to you.

Of course, if you needed to get Windows back on the machine, now you'd have to pay the $180 for a full copy of it, because you had to return any and all materials from your computer purchase in order to get your dollar back.

Of course, if you managed to convince the manufacturer to sell you a computer without an operating system pre-installed, you had to pay an extra $10-$50 for that choice. Why? In order to be sure the computer worked in the first place, they had to install Windows to test the peripherals and other devices! Oh, did you want warranty support too? Sorry. "We don't support other operating systems."

The whole pre-installation thing was pure genius on the part of Microsoft's marketing department.

Wrong !

[zymano]

No duh pre-installing Windows on computers is a huge advantage, but it's not like the vendors don't have a choice.

This article says otherwise.

Some history.

It's the servers

[rutledjw]

That's why. We have an agreement with IBM to use their hardware (golf course agreement - we send them biz, they send us biz) and for the most part I like it. I think their blade and 44X servers are GREAT.

However, they have subtle differences with each set of machines that come off the production line. You can buy 4 servers at the same time and each will be a LITTLE different. Linux doesn't care. We use the same image with blades that we use with 345s that we use with 445s - no sweat.

BUT, with Windows, 2 blades (or whatever) require totally different drivers to be installed. My team can image (literally) tens (and probably 100-200, although we haven't tested that) of servers at once - using Linux in about a day. Windows - won't work, the requirements for the OS to have just the RIGHT driver for each server is a bloody NIGHTMARE.

Another issue is access. A lot of applications with Windows seem to need admin equivalent access and then want that ongoing to change anything. This means a lot of people need a LOT more access than we want to give out! With *nix, we've managed to use sudo and scripts to keep those boxes better locked down.

Otherwise, to be frank, I don't give a r@ts ass one way or the other. I simply line Linux b/c it works. If we could get past the image issue, I could probably live with Windows (and just suck it up WRT access).

Re:The issue...

[Lukey Boy]

Are you that naive? Seriously? Shitloads of spyware, spam trojans and the ilk use security holes in Internet Explorer to install themselves. On one of the recent machines that I've seen compromised, a "stupid user" simply surfed to a bunch of sites using Google via Internet Explorer. One of the sites was malicious, and with no software installation prompts suddenly the network traffic goes nuts. I do an iptraf monitor and see that her computer is scanning IP address sequentially, trying to access port 135 (hello DCOM+ vulnerability). And connecting to IRC networks, then subsequently to port 25 to send spam.

If you truly believe that viruses and other types of malware don't exploit these holes then I doubt I'll be able to convince you. Look around with Google.

Re:It's a Catch-22

[karstux]

You mean like SDL? Open-source, object-oriented and very cross-platform, provides facilities for 2d and OpenGL graphics, sound, input, and timers. Unfortunately nothing in the networking department.

I think many of the popular emulators use it... don't know about "big" games though.

Re:Longhorn is the answer

[OneSmartFellow]

The reason Windows is so problematic is that it's still largely built on a codebase that was never designed to be connected to an enormous untrusted network like the Internet.

That has nothing to do with it.

Install XP (no SP2)

Reboot

You are machine administrator, it's not even a choice unless you create a different account, give it admin rights, then remove the admin rights from your initial user.

OK, that little fiasco over, now configure a net connection then run "netstat -a -o"

What are all those processes listening on non-loopback adress for ?????

Why would the default installation come configured to do somehting that stupid ?

Now, connect to the internet, use a web browser and a Chat app - particularly astonishing results come from MS's own apps, but you'll get similar results with any.

run the netstat test again.

Tell me, did you allow those processes to run, did you allow those processes to listen

That's what's wrong with Windows, not the 'codebase'

Re:Microsoft needs to be banned from preinstalling

[Dr_Marvin_Monroe]

No, as I recall, the anti-trust settlement between the government and MS occured something like 3 days after 9/11.

I've always been suspicious that those infamous "NSA_KEYS" had something to do with the settlement..... I could easily see MS proposing something like "drop this nonsense and we'll give you boys all the inside crypto keys you want, we'll keep Windows insecure and you can keep everyone owned.."

Check... You'll see, settlement talks during GW's tenure were even in NY as I recall!

They've been found guilty after all... No other convicted criminal is/has been allowed to keep their illegally gotten wealth after being convicted!... It's unprecidented, but TOTALLY slipped by in the hysteria after 9/11!..... There's a government connection here, they certainly wouldn't let me keep the money after robbing a bank!... It's unprecidented!

Re:Microsoft needs to be banned from preinstalling

[njcoder]

Attorney General John Ashcroft, whose department crafted the deal, hailed the decision as "a major victory for consumers and businesses" and said his department was "strongly committed" to ensuring Microsoft abide by it.

From here

Or this:

Opponents of the settlement are likely to question the extent to which politics played a role in the agreement. The Justice Department has gone from advocating a breakup of Microsoft under the Clinton administration to accepting a much milder settlement at the behest of Assistant Attorney General Charles James.

From here

Ashcroft and James didn't have their positions in Clinton's administration.

Bad Moderators, go sit in the corner and think about what you've done.

Boring

[Pan T. Hose]

Longhorn will be the first release of Windows authored completely after Microsoft began their Trusted Computing Initiative and released .NET. Longhorn will reimplement and convert major Windows subsystems to managed code.

This really starts to get boring. I have already written about it countless times only to get completely ignored every time I dare to point out that the emperor is naked.

I find it truly amusing that people who say that there are other advantages than only Digital Restrictions Management of using "trusted" computing and Palladium-like platforms usually talk with great enthusiasm and excitement about the new and innovative security features that have already been implemented in the 1970s for crying out loud, only better and with no strings attached. All TCPA zealots are usually completely ignorant of the existance of such operating systems as KeyKOS or EROS with formal proofs of correctness for God's sake and without all of the silliness of "trusted" computing.

And no, this is not only my opinion that we don't need DRM to get security. I am not the only one who says that everything that TCPA can possibly do to security can also be done in software, with the only exception of DRM, and in fact it has already been done, decades ago. I am not really surprised at all why it is completely ignored by the TCPA and TCI pushing industry. I am only outraged that there are so many naïve people who once again will gladly do anything no matter how dumb it is, if only their good uncle Bill Gates says that it's good for them.

Please, people, if you want to learn about real systems security, then read some old papers by Jerome Saltzer, Michael Schroeder, Norman Hardy and Jonathan Shapiro. If you want to learn about cryptography, read texts by Bruce Schneier. Microsoft is not a reliable source of knowledge in that field.

People always ask me where are the real innovations in systems security and I always say them that they are in the seventies, and have been being ingnored since then by major software vendors because people don't demand using them. This story and this thread is a great example: "Yeah, this version of Windows may suck, but still I am looking forward to buy the next one."

This will dramatically lessen the exploitation potential of code flaws in the Windows application libraries. Microsoft has to maintain support for legacy application, but that doesn't mean they can't get a fresh start on the underlying code, and doesn't mean that existing Microsoft applications can't be converted to managed code as well.

Wait, I've already heard it... In 1995, 1998, 2000, 2003... Oh, you mean that this time they really mean it?

eDirectory!

[ImaLamer]

Active Directory is pretty sweet and all....

In fact I stopped hating Microsoft (for a while) after my first 10 installs of 2000 Server and Active Directory. I fell for the hype, which was mostly true, until I used Novell Netware 6.0 with eDirectory.

eDirectory is the same, plus better and it runs on Linux, Windows and pretty much any place you want to install it. The licensing is a lot more straight-forward, it's better than Active Directory, runs on Linux and it's Novell. We love Novell now don't we?

I say the question is:

Why Does Everyone Think Novell Still Sucks?

A story

[Poseidon88]

Let me tell you a story about why I'll never be a dedicated Linux user. I've been wanting to get into the world of digital video recording for some time now, but I am put off by the idea of paying a monthly fee for a service like Tivo. Instead, I decided to look at my options in the do-it-yourself field. A friend at work is a major Linux advocate, and urged me to give MythTV a try. I figured I'd give it a shot. I'm an intelligent person, and I use Linux and BSD fairly regularly for various functions at work. It couldn't be that hard, right? So I ordered a bunch of hardware to build the box, and burned myself some ISOs of Slackware 10.0, then got down to business. Here's a rough timeline of how things progressed:

Day 1: Couldn't partition my hard drive because the Slackware installation disk doesn't have drivers for SATA disk controllers. Spent the rest of the day searching the web for work-arounds.

Day 2: Located a message board where someone had posted a custom ISO image of Slackware disk 1 with a SATA-enabled kernel. Was able to partition my hard drive and get setup running, but when it came time to pick a kernel to install, it refused to let me insert disk 1 to grab the SATA kernel. Spent the rest of the day searching the web for work-arounds.

Day 3: Finally figured out that I could put the setup process in the background, unmount the CD, eject and re-insert disk 1, then bring setup back to the foreground. Completed setup and got X running. Copied over source for 2.6.10 kernel, which I had burned to a CD. Started doing configuration, and realized there were no Linux drivers available for my wireless network card. Spent the rest of the day searching the web for solutions.

Day 4: Discovered ndiswrapper, a module that allows you to use standard Windows drivers for wireless NICs under Linux. Downloaded and built it with no problems. Tried to load my NIC drivers, and the entire OS immediately locked up. Rebooted and tried a couple more times with the same results. Spent the next 2 days searching the web for solutions.

Day 6: Finally found a single post from someone who had the same hardware revision of the same card, who had been able to get it working using the 2.6.9 kernel. Burned the source to CD and installed it on Linux box, configured, compiled, rebooted, built ndiswrapper and it worked! Unfortunately, I couldn't get an address from DHCP server. Spent the rest of the day searching the web for solutions.

Day 7: Took a day off.

Day 8: Found out that I was using the wrong command to query DHCP (I was foolishly running dhcclient instead of dhcpcd, it's so obvious!), so now DHCP works and I can connect to the net without having to assign a static IP address. I spent the next couple days configuring the video drivers, audio drivers, and getting all the modules to configure correctly at boot-up.

Day 10: Started working on getting the video-capture card drivers working. Ran into a myriad of build errors right off the bat. Did some research and learned I needed to compile some extra features into the kernel before the drivers will build. So I reconfigure, build, install, reboot... and the kernel won't load. Decide to call it a day and have a few stiff drinks before I am tempted to toss the computer out the window.

Day 11: Okay, turned out it wasn't anything tragic, I booted to an older kernel, rebuilt the new kernel, and everything worked fine. But the capture card drivers still wouldn't build. Spent the rest of the day searching the web for solutions.

Day 12: Finally realized that all info I've found about using this particular capture card refers to the fact that the user was using a 2.4 kernel instead of 2.6. So I download the kernel source, configure, build, install, reboot... and now I can build and install the capture card drivers. Unfortunately, there are no drivers available in the kernel source for my motherboard sound chipset. But I figure I can address that problem later. I do a bunch of configuring, ho