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Buy Vista or Else
theodp writes "Upgrade or keep crashing was the tagline when Windows XP was introduced. So how will Windows Vista be marketed? 'I'd hate to see something bad happen to your PC,' seems to be one pitch. Even if new features won't get you to upgrade to Vista, you should buy Vista for the security, urged Windows Chief Jim Allchin. Are commercials featuring Tony Soprano next? Bada Bing!"
Who's to say Vista will be secure? Surely from past experience its safer to use XP which has had numerous security patches then a whole new OS with thousands of vulnerabilities to be found
maybe they should say "upgrade to linux for the security" (or macOS X)... Vista seems to be offering very little in terms of features, and will offer little else in terms of security, partly people go for it because it's what most people use, and partly because M$ just doesn't take security seriously enough... they need to have a root and branch change of how the OS is designed to give a greater emphasis on security instead of useless visual tweaks.
*''I can't believe it's not a hyperlink.''
"nice computer you got here... be a shame if it crashed...."
This is all about anti-Microsoft masturbatory geekspasms, right? Let the games begin:
Yeah, Winblows security? They haven't reimplemented enough of Unix to be secure yet.
- or -
Sure, it's secure - it can't be pwned when the new RSOD feature is active.
Well, I've shot my wad.
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
From TFA: "People Near Me" feature, which searches over a Wi-Fi connection for other Vista users nearby and then sets up a peer-to-peer network with them. Yeah, that sounds pretty secure. Same old Microsoft.
No sooner do I get over one, then you put a better one right next to me. Bastards.
The link to rule them all :r keting.jpg
http://uncyclopedia.org/wiki/Image:Windowsvistama
Or we'll send Balmer around with this chair...
Silly rabbit
I'm all for upgrading things to newer versions to enhance security. Secure by design should be the default, and if someone fessed up and said, "Hey, we fucked up last time, but we got it right this time", and could be trusted, then it wouldn't be extortionist of them to try this.
But we've all seen how Trustworthy Computing didn't really change things. New products came through that obviously weren't vetted, and plenty of legacy problems remained. I don't know who's really going to buy Vista because they'll believe the security "threat" perpetuated by MS.
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
'I'd hate to see something bad happen to your PC'
Jeez, if it's alredy got windows on it, how much worse can it possibly get?? *ducks*
Buy Vista... or someone might throw a chair at you.
In Soviet Russa, Windows Vista pays you protection money
Take your pick folks, I'll be here till Sunday.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
As long as I don't find my computer's monitor in my bed, I'm not upgrading.
"Even if they are not into home entertainment or in any of the specialty areas, they are just going to feel safer and more secure by using it."
"...[Alchin] demonstrated a collaboration tool that uses a "People Near Me" feature, which searches over a Wi-Fi connection for other Vista users nearby and then sets up a peer-to-peer network with them."
Your computer must be more secure -- it can automatically network wirelessly with other computers to share your files.
$nice = $webHosting + $domainNames + $sslCerts
Start shipping installs secured from the start. Require an admin/install user account for new system wide applications, sandbox user installed software in their home directory/profile. Users then don't trash everything when they fubar their profile or homedir. Windows has all the necessary features to do it, It's had them since the first versions of NT.
Microsoft frankly can't be arsed and there's no profit in a secured system when they can instead continually be selling you upgrades as security fixes.
It isn't rocket science, it's just segregation of responsibility. Unix has been doing it for 30 years. No wait, it must be closer to 35 now.
Deleted
no one on earth is forcing an IT, CIO, homemaker, graphic artist, gamer or anyone else to HAVE TO BUY Micro Soft's shit.
I have for the last two years officially told people - i cannot and will not help you if you are running Windows. I am too busy accomplishing things (photography, videographic analysis) to be bothered with tools that do not just work. I don't care that there are millions of Windows viruses, i don't care if your webpage doens't work with anything but IE and Active X, i just have stopped caring.
I am getting older - i have a family, and i want to create and do things which are special, and i no longer have the time nor the incination to either myself, or have to deal with others who's job it is to spend all day and night defending computers from themselves. I am the architect who doesn't want to deal with the knock-off cheap Chinese crap powertools and hear all the workers bitch about them, or hear about the foreman that tells me i have to keep taking apart all the power tools and putting them back together again... build the fscking house - go get the tools that WORK - and pay more for them if you have to.
The simple fact is - its totally irrelevant to me if a Mac costs $1000 or $3000. If it does what i need - and prevents me from having to fix my tool all day long - the $3000 tool will be far more vaulable in just a week or two. Theoretical, imaginary, or otherwise fantasmic notions that Macs are just as insecure as Windows are irrelevant to me - i work today, and i work now. (well, its saturday, i'm only working a few hours today).
But the flip side of that is - i no longer give a shit what anyone uses. I don't care. Do not bother me or hassle me or get in my way if you can't keep up with me. My friends and family no longer bother me - i bought my family Mac minis, and my friends are all switching.
The world uses Windows?? I'm fscking George Bush of the Mac - i don't give a shit if every person on earth said "jump off this cliff, its the industry standard"
i'm not a lemming - i have things to get done. Whatever you want to do is fine with me, you're out of my "circle of give a shit".
You run Windows. I'm getting things done.
guns kill people like spoons make Rosie O'Donnell fat.
I think screenshots will be the selling point for most people.
When they have things like the WMF flaw in the designs (And ended up in Vista as well as XP and 2000...) they are NOT about security.
Security is by design, not as a friggin' afterthought.
This has little to do with MS bashing- it's just that MS doesn't think much about security and everyone knows it (Well, everyone but you, it seems...)
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
Microsoft designed the 9x with the clear conscience that it's not as stable as its NT platform.
Why was it developed? Compatibility. People wouldn't really drop all their DOS and Windows 3.11 programs, so 9x was the bridge that allowed the smooth transition that ultimately brought the consumer to the NT platform.
The plain logic basically was "we have the better platform, but you want compatibility, so here's a compromise".
Now that 16-bit is a thing of the past, the DOS layer could be removed ultimately resulting in a fully 32-bit protected environment that is Win 2000 and XP. Is Microsoft to blame they sell XP as more stable OS?
Could they have success with any other strategy? I'd say unlikely.
Vista is the next step in improving security and it took a lot of effort to develop this OS, the entire submission is a flamebait: if you were Microsoft, would you work 6 years on a new product and give it for free? Yes, imagine, you have to pay for the updates, and yes the purpose of updating is improved security, new features and modern hardware support.
Microsoft isn't forcing anyone to upgrade. It just does its best to demonstrate the benefits of its latest offering, because this is what software companies do with new releases.
Now get over it, and stop ranting.
With the advent of the iPod, I already know of a few people who are considering a Mac as their next purchase -- the everyday Joe who would have never considered a Mac before. With more game and application developer support on the Macs, I think Apple has the ability to eat a large chunk of the Desktop OS market during the switch from XP to Vista. If Guild Wars, Counter Strike Source, and Spore get a Mac release, I'd certainly be one to get a Mac. It would also make my decision between Linux or Mac a bit easier.
...Ballmer.
"Fucking XP users are fucking pussies. I'm going to fucking bury them, I have done it before, and I will do it again...I'm going to fucking kill anybody that doesn't upgrade."
This sig rocks the casbah.
This is nothing new . . . we live in an society (post 9-11) where everything is predicated on fear. "Buy our anti-bacterial hand soap or your kids may die!!" , "Buy this ADT security system or you are a failure as a parent" . . . marketers and the government have embraced the ubiquitous power of fear and uncertainty to sell everything from tampons to troop deployments . . .ad nausea infinitum
Personally I am more afraid of deploying Windows Vista than not, and Microsoft can stick the DRM in the orifice of their choice.
Of what I have read, there will be, at least, one thing that could improve Vista's security. Also, several people have commented on it without having read anything about Vista. Users will login to a limited access user account, rather then an administrator account as the default.
Unfortunately, there are several bad points with Vista that will make me hesitate on upgrading:
"Be particularly skeptical when presented with evidence confirming what you already believe." -
..... And by requiring all that, you immediately nullify one of the chief "advantages" of Windows. That is, the ability just to turn on a computer and start using it, without identifying yourself or otherwise taking notice of it. You don't get a screenful of diagnostic messages ending with a bunch of green [OK]s while Windows is booting up, "in case that might confuse the poor user". {As a full-time Linux user who has had to attempt to fix a Windows box, I can say that not having those messages is way more inconvenient for the technician than having them is inconvenient for the user. Users can just ignore them, after all. On that logic, maybe we should start building cars where the oil pressure and alternator warning lights don't come on when you first turn on the ignition.} The default privilege level is administrator; but unlike root on a unix system, there are certain actions that are blocked from even an administrator on a Windows system.
I think Windows with passwords is going to be a bit like a pale imitation of KDE.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
MS has failed the user community when it has to say, 'don't keep running the old unsecure shit we sold you last year, buy this new shit. And trust us this time.'
It's pretty clear to me that the main reason that Windows has so many security problems is that there is something inherently broken in its design. Remember: when Microsoft first designed Windows, no one was using the Internet, office LANs were pretty much the most networking you were likely to find. So Microsoft didn't have to think about network security back then. Now that the world of computing is increasingly connected to a high-bandwidth Internet connection all the time, it's clear that the model that Windows is built upon is broken.
I think it would benefit Microsoft to do a fundamental redesign of Windows. Apple did this about five years ago when they made the transition from Classic Mac OS 9 to Mac OS X. They designed an API that permitted developers to write software that ran natively on both operating systems (Carbon) and gradually phased it out in favor of an API that was completely native to Mac OS X (Cocoa). At the same time, there were many applications that would only run on Mac OS 9 -- i.e., those that were not Carbonized -- that ran in a (mostly transparent) virtualized environment. Microsoft could follow the same pattern as Apple and redesign their operating system from the ground up with security as a primary focus.
The thing that's going to get people to upgrade to Vista isn't the desktop search or any new multimedia features. It's the security and the performance. Right now, Microsoft keeps tacking on bloat after bloat to the existing Windows codebase. This has the effect of making Windows slower. Also, these "ad-hoc" additions, I think, have a tendency of opening up security holes. Microsoft, it's time for you to reevaluate the design of your operating system. Instead of focusing on devising as many different editions as you can for Vista -- which, by the way, baffles the hell out of a lot of your customers -- it's time to wipe the slate clean and start over.
I know we've all said at one point or another, "if I'd known then what I know now, I would have done things completely differently." Well, Microsoft, you do know stuff now that you didn't know 20 years ago. It's time to do things completely differently. Your model no longer works; find a new one.
If it's not one thing it's your mother.
KDE can be easily configured to be quite Windows-like. Many people didn't even notice, to be quite honest. We did our best to make the transition as seamless as possible, and we managed to do that well.
We labelled the OpenOffice Writer icon as "Microsoft Word", for instance, and people didn't know the difference.
We imported the Word templates and Excel spreadsheets they were using, tested them out with the OpenOffice equivalents, and for the most part they worked. The one problem we ran into was the font on the standard company letterhead was a bit too large under OpenOffice. That took about a second or so to remedy, of course.
When they asked about the games and MSN, they were simply told that they were deleted.
A little bit of preparation, forethought, and the use of quality software lead to a transition that went very well.
Cyric Zndovzny at your service.
The saddest aspect of Vista's arrival, as far as I'm concerned, is that XP technology has been no improvement over Win2k Pro or Win2k Server in our company. And now we get another scary OS release from MS as the end-of-life date for 2000 products draws near. After SP4 came out for the 2000 products, the only real annoyance was the constant stream of critical updates, some of which unleashed mayhem on our network until we got a handle on update management. Otherwise, the Windows 2000 servers have been rock solid. Meanwhile, XP and Server 2003 have been insufferable turkeys, making me regret every installation. The memory leaks that have plagued Server 2003 should be getting a lot more attention than they've been getting in the tech press. I suspect Microsoft would say that hardware vendors have delivered faulty drivers, but we never saw the random crashes and reboots in Windows 2000 Server that we see in our 2003 servers. I can't trust the 2003 platform anymore - - we moved everything of importance back to Win2k. Service Pack 1 for 2003 Server was about as helpful as a broken ankle. I understand we might see SP2 in 2007. Wow, that's encouraging. Who here wants to dive for Vista? Thank the gods for Linux, Apache, and MySQL . . . .
It's only funny until someone gets hurt. Then, it's hilarious.
We labelled the OpenOffice Writer icon as "Microsoft Word", for instance, and people didn't know the difference.
We need to talk.
--Sincerely,
Microsoft Legal Dept.
Is security a binary thing? Is something secure or insecure ?
I don't think so.
I think "security" is a blend of many things.. the _correctness_ of non-security features, the selection and depth of security-focused features, the process around resolving defects (because there will be defects), and the conditions under which a user can use the machine.
Even if Microsoft had done everything they knew how to do to make XP "secure" when they had made it, would it be secure today? No. Because today new threats are understood and being used that weren't in existance when XP was designed and shipped. Is XP retroactively insecure? Or it just less secure than something newer, all things otherwise equal, that was developed with the context of the threats that have emerged since XP was released?
In the specific case of Vista vs XP, some of the things that are "better" this time around are
- more credible run-as-non-admin story
- better sandboxing and least-priviledge stuff, even within a normal user account (i.e. its not necessarily true that IE running as you can do anything you can)
The run-as-non-admin thing "worked" in XP, but with enough caveats that it was hard to credibly say "everyone, do it that way". The POR for XP was to ship with non-admin-by-default until very, very late in the ship cycle, where there was just too much stuff that didn't work as non-admin. They made the hard decisino to make users=admin by default, and nobody was happy about it. This is a problem that Microsoft has been chipping away at for a while now, because the goal is "let everyone run with as few permissions as possible" and it often conflicts with the other goal of "20 year old software written by 3rd party people needs to keep running"
I have no problem buying that Vista has more security-focused features than XP. I have no problem buying that Vista has better code correctness in non-security features than XP. I don't think the security response process will be any worse in vista, infact, i know of at least one technology that makes it better (but im not sure if its public yet?).
Will Vista be "more secure" than XP? I think so. Will it be "as secure" as OpenBSD? Probably not. Will it do more things that more users want than OpenBSD? Definiately. Will Vista have a better intersection of practical security vs functionality than OpenBSD?
Microsoft thinks so, and I think I agree with them.
My opinions are my own, and do not necessarily represent those of my employer.