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A Guided Tour of the Microsoft Command Shell
jpkunst writes "Ryan Paul at Ars Technica provides an in-depth, 13 page review of the new Microsoft Command Shell (Monad). (The beta release can be downloaded for free from Microsoft.) From the conclusion: 'Despite my initial skepticism, I am deeply impressed with MSH technology, and I am legitimately excited about the future of the Windows command line.'"
There's far more of a difference between Windows XP and Windows 2000, then just a graphical skin. The methods for accessing a handful of configuration settings windows has altered and in some cases, those configuration modules have changed significantly on their own.
To say that there won't be changes beyond simple "Graphical skins" simply does not hold with the historical perspective of the sweeping changes with each major iteration of Windows.
Windows 3.11 to Windows 95 to Windows 98 to WindowsMe, there were underlying configuration changes that made learning the "new" OS important.
Windows NT 3.5 to Windows NT 4.0 to Windows 2000 to Windows XP also included significant configuration setting alterations that were far more drastic then the "Consumer Level" Windows Operating Systems.
If you ignore the other uses of a tool, does that make the tool less useful, or you less useful?
Very true. I think this system could work well though, despite not having used it, but I guess I'll have to give it a go to really know. Kinda worried about the noted limitations of its tab-completion though — that's one feature that I'd, at the very least, find difficult to let go.
As for more arbitrary pipes, there is some degree of good news in the discussion thread which goes along with the article, in particular this little gem:
I'm not sure how far this aliasing can be taken, it's possible it only works on text rather than bitstreams, but it's encouraging that the *nix command line apps can be aliased and seem to "play nice" with the MSH system.
Yes, you can. you can change registry settings from the command line. Yes, you have to know the exact location, but that's like saying 'you have to know how to use a computer to use a computer'.
Yes you can install ALL programs from the command line... expecially the ones designed to use the standard windows installer (.MSI). It has some powerful commandline options, which are universal across all apps that use it. Search for msiexec.exe
You can do everything and anything from the command line. WSH/WMI add a great deal more functionality as well, and you can still keep it at the command line.
The Digital Couture Collection
If you had read the article you would have discovered that MSH includes a managed virtualfilesystem-like provider for the registry that allows you to navigate the registry and read/write settings.
This download offers you the benefits of registering with Microsoft. Click the Continue button near the top of this page to register.c 8ff-c4eb-41f3-884e-981bf39997b7/monad_b2_50215_x86 .zip
2 6fea1-723d-4bd6-93c1-19d681af9276.aspx
no thanks, I would rather just download it.
http://download.microsoft.com/download/7/4/6/746e
taken from
http://www.leeholmes.com/blog/CommentView,guid,8b
(which also has the 64 bit version)
ERR 411[Max number of witty sigs reached]
Do you know what the definition of "malware" is? Any code can be malware. If you sent someone a shell script to shutdown their system and they think its a link to their favorite pr0n site, guess what? Its malware!
Then by using your logic, so is giving someone the keys to a car.... The registry is a centralized database of configuration settings for the OS and applications. Its no different than having 5000 configuration files scattered through a system, other than of course that its in a centralized database. IMNSHO the *nixes can benefit from this concept. Yes, there are limitations, and there should be better security within it, but nothing is stopping someone from hacking Httpd.conf either.
Active-X is a development platform. It can be exploited just like anything else, people create java based virii all the time, the problem is users are dumb enough to just hit "yes install this crap on my system".
Here's a nice quote for you:
'We fear things in proportion to our ignorance of them.' -- Titus Livius
Now, yes, these things make it *EASIER* for people to take advantage of. However, they were always there, they're there on any platform, its just whether or not people take advantage of them in malice. The better question is "What's MS actually doing to MITIGATE these problems?" Well, I think they finally took a page from the *nix (linux/unix) world and implemented this "revolutionary" feature with Vista: User Account Protection What the hell is that you ask? Well, in simplest terms, its sudo. When UAP is enabled, any action you take that requires "administrator" access, will now prompt you for credentials to do so, even if you are an administrator. Yeap, you guessed it, even admins are no longer admins. What's that do to applications? Well, thats for the developers to fix! But it "fixes" one of the most blatant issues most people had with Windows security: that their grandmother had to be an administrator on her home PC to use her copy of Quicken, and because of that, she also had 5kajillian pieces of spyware installed.