Usually, right before you die, your concentration is very high and if your a skilled gamer you can likely see you are losing whatever fight you are participating in. Then when you die you relax. After all there is no need to be tense once the fight has ended. It's the same as how a polygraph machine works. You anticipate the bad thing (dying in the case of a game, lying to a dangerous question in the case of a lie detector) by tensing up then you relax once it's over.
Lie detectors show the increase in tension and sudden relaxation... the test taker then marks that point to identify that is the moment where you answered a question. Later he goes back and based mostly on his opinion and some loose training he decides whether or not the build in tension and sudden relaxation is indicative of a lie.
They have done the same thing here but have draw conclusions WAY too far from what the evidence shows.
A battery could likely be removed with the system on. A capacitor can be bypassed and forced to give up it's charge early.... also with the system on.
If some one malicious gains physical access to your computer it is game over... period.
I have the same question... but for slightly different reasons. As I recall there was a huge fuss about the devs responsible for chroot implementation in bsd telling every one to get lost off when a built-in method for escaping a chroot jail was discovered. People wanted the "vulnerability" fixed and the devs responded with "it isn't a vulnerability, it is a feature... why are you using chroot for security any way?"
Long story short the devs made it clear they didn't give a crap if chroot jails could be broken out of, they never intended chroot to be used for security any way.
Comcast began providing this feature where I live almost a year ago.
Cable providers have always capped their clients. Each cable node often can provide 60 megabits at a time easily, though most end servers don't allow a sustained download at that speed. However If clients are left completely uncapped a hand full of users could possibly soak up all the available bandwidth. If you have even gotten stuck on a 10mbps network with some one who likes to play games or use p2p software you will have seen this in action. For that reason users are given a set limit on their individual downloads and uploads.
About a year ago here Comcast began uncapping users for the first 30 seconds of any connection. The concept is that web browsing and streaming media will benefit from the burst of speed (up to 25 mbit in my area) while services that would be capped on the servers end any way (file transfers) will be mostly as they always have been. A best of both world scenario. With the increasing use of active media in web pages it makes sense that short lived connections that wouldn't really take away bandwidth from any one else should be allowed to download as quickly as possible.
They aren't the only cable provider that has started doing this ether. Time Warner just told a friend of mine when he moved into a new apartment that they were offering the same thing.
FTA ""That's not true!" I hear you scream. "Linux is worth a lot! It's just being offered for free!" I know it's not true that Linux is worth less than Windows. It's far more valuable to the end user in terms of getting things done."
I'm sorry but... no it isn't more valuable, ESPECIALLY in terms of getting things done. Most of my time spent actively using linux is spent holding it's hand to get it to do what I can do in windows with a hand full of mouse clicks and a restart. Maybe I wouldn't have to restart in the case of linux but in a choice between fighting with linux for 4 hours or 30 seconds clicking stuff in windows followed by a 2 minute long reboot, I pick the latter.
I agree that free will make people pause and consider the possibility of getting burned, but then a few people take the plunge and try it any way, whether because of tight money or curiosity. Those people will come back with stories of how good or bad something is. Napster is a perfect example. The music could have easily been some degraded low quality crap, and in some cases it was. People didn't know what p2p was and most people when they first heard aobut it had no idea that they would be downloading stuff from other end users or that they themselves would be sharing what they downloaded. What they knew was a free service was offering something that normally costs 25 bux at Walmart... at no cost.
If what this man says is true then Napster should have struggled for years. It didn't. The question is "WHY?" The answer isn't in how much people paid for the songs they downloaded. The answer is that it didn't have countless individuals try it and then discover it to be full of problems and limitations that ultimately made it worth LESS than free. I know that this will not be a popular sentiment on Slashdot but Linux has many serious flaws. The number one is that it is designed with the assumption that people who could barely operate a mouse a month ago could tell Ubuntu what services need to be stopped before APM is upgraded. If I had been a blogger I would have been blogging about it the moment I saw that. Ubuntu is leaps and bounds closer to being "user friendly" than any other Linux Distro that I have tried, but it is still less user friendly than say... Windows 95.
In the end users don't really care that much about the cost of Windows. Most of them are completely unaware of what Windows is or that it can even be purchased separately from a computer... much less how much it costs. Truth be told most of them purchase Windows with their computers and in doing so end up spending about $10 on it. Their number one concern is that it "just works." Linux works... but it doesn't "just work." In many cases it has to be MADE to work... unlike Windows.
Myself as a power user and a computer professional for almost 10 years have had more than my share of struggles with Linux. For the past 6 years I have run a small company file server using various distros of Linux. As time wound on I began to notice that some days I got plenty of work done, and on others I got practically none. I also noted that the days I got practical none done where the days I found I was the most stressed and tired at the end of the day. Linux was the reason. I would start my day and soon find myself "fixing" my file server that I hadn't realized was not setup right to allow networked printing from a Win9x machine or wouldn't allow me to access to my SQL server because of some idiosyncrasy with my new router (etc, etc). By the end of the day I might have fixed my file server but probably hadn't gotten much else done. More and more I started keeping files I use often on my gaming machine to reduce downtime until finally I wasn't even using my file server.
About a month ago I finally caved and purchased Windows 2003 Server. Within 10 minutes of hitting the desktop I had file sharing, dns, printer sharing, and sql running. On a whim I set up an active directory domain in 15 minutes. Friday I decided to setup an NIS Domain
Uhm sound cards.... try closer to 10 (realtek, sis, and many many others make their own audio chips and cards)
GPU makers? at least 7.
Expansion interfaces are currently at 4 PCI, AGP, PCIx, and PCIe (the only one i have ever fooled with that is not still in circulation is ISA)
Then there are multiple standards for USB, including 2 for usb1 and 1 for usb2. There are multiple different manufacturers of sata, raid, and ata controllers (intel, nvidia, ati, via, sis, adaptec, etc). Multiple different manufacturers of ethernet (dlink, netgear, linksys, network anywhere, belkin, and an endless list of no name manufacturers). Different manufactures of printers (hp, canon, lexmark, brother, xerox, and many more). Different standards for printer communication (post script and the endless list of PCL revisions). There is odd ball hardware like bar code scanners and biometrics devices. The list goes on just about endlessly...
To make things even more complicated each manufacturer generally has multiple lines of products with their own little twists being pumped out at the same time... and then there is the discontinued hardware that is still in circulation.
Then to top it all of you have to consider that the hardware itself has become more complicated. Some bios chips do as much as an operating system did back in the 80s.
Sorry... but even if things are less convoluted than they were, they are still impossibly convoluted.
He is doing this because you he has been told to. Not all "leaks" are unintentional.
Think about this: If MS decides to publicly announce that they rushed a product they had reason to believe was flawed to market then they could find themselves in even more hot water with early adopters. They would also further alienate their current and future consumer base. If they had come out and been honest about it when it first happened, they would have got a bunch of flak and people would have cooled off. Now that it has gone on so long any admittance on their part of wrong doing could result in litigation and even more consumer unrest.
On the other hand if they continue to keep silent about it the "cloud of uncertainty" mentioned in the article will continue to keep people like me who don't like paying more than $10 on something they can't rely on from buying a 360. Instead buying a 360 drops to the bottom of our list and we only intend to buy a 360 that is second hand and shows signs of having passed the test of time.
So instead they leak the information through a single source with all the trappings of unreliability. The information gets out so that people know what's going on but any attempt to act on it legally runs into issues such as no one being able to prove that what this guy is saying is true or even that this guy exists. In light of the struggle now facing HD-DVD Microsoft might be trying to mitigate the damage by improving sales on the XBOX.
I tried something like that at first too. Unfortunately, Some usb hd drive enclosures change the way the computer recognizes drive geometry. This doesn't matter if your planning to install a blank drive or even an old drive and format it new, but if you want to reliably read data from a formerly internal hard drive it is better to use something like: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812232002
I haven't tested this with nexstar enclosures though, so they might be exempt.
Oh and magnets pretty much do nothing. Don't even bother trying. A powerful oscillating magnetic field like form an AC electric motor or a DC/AC generator might distort the data, but it is still recoverable and wouldn't even require special hardware.
Bullet to the hard drive = data not on the part of the platters damaged can be recovered Remove magnets = all data can be recovered Sledge hammer = any where from 60 to 90 percent of the data can be recovered so on and so forth.
Let me break it down for you: To remove any chance of data recovery the platters have to be completely destroyed.
Blunt force and shock only destroys the circuitry and mechanical parts reliably. Some of the magnetic fields on the platters are damaged but with a quick disassembly and the right hardware/software the data could be recovered. The formating and files might be a bit garbled but some one trying hard enough would almost certainly be able to reconstruct large portions of the data. You're average computer geek could do it if he know what he was doing.
Removing parts of the drive only works until the platters are taken out and put in another drive of the identical model or run through special equipment.
Damaging or destroying the platters partially still leaves parts of data readable, given access to the proper equipment... something most wouldn't have.
I would suggest an incinerator or strong acid.
All that said. What is the point? Run a good secure erase software on it and call it done. Anything supporting multiple passes with guttman should do an excellent job, leaves the drive functioning, and no one without a lot of skill, hardware, and time, would be able to even tell that there WAS data on the drive before its current format, much less what that data was. As for hooking it up to the computer via USB I personally use this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812232002
COME THE FACK ON! WTF? This is so fricken out of hand.
The worst thing about Vista (other than DRM) is compatibility issues. That is its number one problem and guess what? Right now there are very few "mainstream" programs left which aren't fully compatible with Vista.
I've been using Vista off and on since it came out. In march it reached a point were with my skill set as a computer repair tech I could handle the issues that cropped up day to day. It is now October and I haven't had to "fix" anything in over 2 months. All the software I use including Firefox, Nero, Alcohol 52%, Adobe Photoshop CS2, Adobe Acrobat 8 Pro, Adobe Flash CS3, uTorrent, Winamp 5, Zoom Player Pro, mIrc, Winrar, Trillian Astra and Trillian 3 Pro, FileZilla, Last.fm, Quick Time, Steam (and all associated games that do not require dosbox emulation), Avast! AV for Home, and VMWare Workstation are working perfectly. All the hardware in my machine is fully enabled via manufactures drivers EXCEPT my Razer Barracuda sound card (which is odd because Razer is pretty much the only company with a sound card product who isn't capable of fully supporting Vista... if only I didn't hate creative so much). The only program which is still not fully functioning for me is dosbox (works under 32bit but not 64bit).
Let's address the other common complaints one at a time:
1: The price.
This is certainly a very legitimate concern for those who are upgrading their computers or building a new one. If you purchased Vista through an OEM then you paid about 15 dollars for Vista (how do YOU think dell offers a $300 dollar computer when XP/Vista OEM alone is $150 bux). For those who don't wish to spend so much on Vista for your new computer/upgrade you have many options. If you're upgrading: don't. At this time very few people NEED to upgrade (I needed to in order to learn Vista and get to know its quirks so I wouldn't look like a monkey doing a math problem when I need to fix a Vista computer), and upgrading your OS without upgrading your hardware is almost always a bad idea. For those building a new computer, its not hard to get a down and dirty cheap OEM copy of Vista on ebay, or you can purchase from any of a number of outlets that wont question whether or not you are a licensed OEM if the OEM copy is bought along side a mother board (newegg for example). Besides, if you know enough about computers to build one then you shouldnt need vistas spiffy new security model or easier interface anyway (and honestly no one NEEDS 64bit support). There are more, but I think you get the idea.
2: There is no significant difference between Vista and XP.
If 1 is the difference between Windows 2k (no SP) and Windows 2k (still no SP) and 10 is the difference between Windows 2k (no SP) and Windows XP (no SP). On a scale of 1 to 10 Vista is around a 15 compaired to Windows XP (no SP). For starters not much ever changes from one operating system to another. The difference between Windows 95 and Windows 98 was that windows 98 had better driver support, increased stability, and support for larger file systems (which was added to 95 in the osr2 version). The difference between Windows 98 and Windows ME was improved interface design and organization, removal of the legacy DOS environment as a base for Windows, and a massive increase in bugs. The difference between Windows ME and Windows 2k (which is rather trivial any way since they were released along side each other) is the more stable NT kernel, the improved performance, and some of the worst multi-media capabilities to grace a Windows OS since Windows 3.11 (but then again 2k was never meant for multimedia). The difference between Windows 2k and Windows XP was improved driver handling, better memory management, a vastly better organized user interface, and working multi-media support (and no security was not worse in XP than 2k... for those that weren't paying attention spyware/adware didn't really catch on till 2003, XP was released in 2002).
Slashdot Mirror
Usually, right before you die, your concentration is very high and if your a skilled gamer you can likely see you are losing whatever fight you are participating in. Then when you die you relax. After all there is no need to be tense once the fight has ended. It's the same as how a polygraph machine works. You anticipate the bad thing (dying in the case of a game, lying to a dangerous question in the case of a lie detector) by tensing up then you relax once it's over.
Lie detectors show the increase in tension and sudden relaxation... the test taker then marks that point to identify that is the moment where you answered a question. Later he goes back and based mostly on his opinion and some loose training he decides whether or not the build in tension and sudden relaxation is indicative of a lie.
They have done the same thing here but have draw conclusions WAY too far from what the evidence shows.
A battery could likely be removed with the system on. A capacitor can be bypassed and forced to give up it's charge early.... also with the system on. If some one malicious gains physical access to your computer it is game over... period.
I have the same question... but for slightly different reasons. As I recall there was a huge fuss about the devs responsible for chroot implementation in bsd telling every one to get lost off when a built-in method for escaping a chroot jail was discovered. People wanted the "vulnerability" fixed and the devs responded with "it isn't a vulnerability, it is a feature... why are you using chroot for security any way?"
Long story short the devs made it clear they didn't give a crap if chroot jails could be broken out of, they never intended chroot to be used for security any way.
maybe i misunderstood though.
Comcast began providing this feature where I live almost a year ago. Cable providers have always capped their clients. Each cable node often can provide 60 megabits at a time easily, though most end servers don't allow a sustained download at that speed. However If clients are left completely uncapped a hand full of users could possibly soak up all the available bandwidth. If you have even gotten stuck on a 10mbps network with some one who likes to play games or use p2p software you will have seen this in action. For that reason users are given a set limit on their individual downloads and uploads. About a year ago here Comcast began uncapping users for the first 30 seconds of any connection. The concept is that web browsing and streaming media will benefit from the burst of speed (up to 25 mbit in my area) while services that would be capped on the servers end any way (file transfers) will be mostly as they always have been. A best of both world scenario. With the increasing use of active media in web pages it makes sense that short lived connections that wouldn't really take away bandwidth from any one else should be allowed to download as quickly as possible. They aren't the only cable provider that has started doing this ether. Time Warner just told a friend of mine when he moved into a new apartment that they were offering the same thing.
FTA ""That's not true!" I hear you scream. "Linux is worth a lot! It's just being offered for free!" I know it's not true that Linux is worth less than Windows. It's far more valuable to the end user in terms of getting things done."
I'm sorry but... no it isn't more valuable, ESPECIALLY in terms of getting things done. Most of my time spent actively using linux is spent holding it's hand to get it to do what I can do in windows with a hand full of mouse clicks and a restart. Maybe I wouldn't have to restart in the case of linux but in a choice between fighting with linux for 4 hours or 30 seconds clicking stuff in windows followed by a 2 minute long reboot, I pick the latter.
I agree that free will make people pause and consider the possibility of getting burned, but then a few people take the plunge and try it any way, whether because of tight money or curiosity. Those people will come back with stories of how good or bad something is. Napster is a perfect example. The music could have easily been some degraded low quality crap, and in some cases it was. People didn't know what p2p was and most people when they first heard aobut it had no idea that they would be downloading stuff from other end users or that they themselves would be sharing what they downloaded. What they knew was a free service was offering something that normally costs 25 bux at Walmart... at no cost.
If what this man says is true then Napster should have struggled for years. It didn't. The question is "WHY?" The answer isn't in how much people paid for the songs they downloaded. The answer is that it didn't have countless individuals try it and then discover it to be full of problems and limitations that ultimately made it worth LESS than free. I know that this will not be a popular sentiment on Slashdot but Linux has many serious flaws. The number one is that it is designed with the assumption that people who could barely operate a mouse a month ago could tell Ubuntu what services need to be stopped before APM is upgraded. If I had been a blogger I would have been blogging about it the moment I saw that. Ubuntu is leaps and bounds closer to being "user friendly" than any other Linux Distro that I have tried, but it is still less user friendly than say... Windows 95.
In the end users don't really care that much about the cost of Windows. Most of them are completely unaware of what Windows is or that it can even be purchased separately from a computer... much less how much it costs. Truth be told most of them purchase Windows with their computers and in doing so end up spending about $10 on it. Their number one concern is that it "just works." Linux works... but it doesn't "just work." In many cases it has to be MADE to work... unlike Windows.
Myself as a power user and a computer professional for almost 10 years have had more than my share of struggles with Linux. For the past 6 years I have run a small company file server using various distros of Linux. As time wound on I began to notice that some days I got plenty of work done, and on others I got practically none. I also noted that the days I got practical none done where the days I found I was the most stressed and tired at the end of the day. Linux was the reason. I would start my day and soon find myself "fixing" my file server that I hadn't realized was not setup right to allow networked printing from a Win9x machine or wouldn't allow me to access to my SQL server because of some idiosyncrasy with my new router (etc, etc). By the end of the day I might have fixed my file server but probably hadn't gotten much else done. More and more I started keeping files I use often on my gaming machine to reduce downtime until finally I wasn't even using my file server.
About a month ago I finally caved and purchased Windows 2003 Server. Within 10 minutes of hitting the desktop I had file sharing, dns, printer sharing, and sql running. On a whim I set up an active directory domain in 15 minutes. Friday I decided to setup an NIS Domain
Uhm sound cards.... try closer to 10 (realtek, sis, and many many others make their own audio chips and cards)
GPU makers? at least 7.
Expansion interfaces are currently at 4 PCI, AGP, PCIx, and PCIe (the only one i have ever fooled with that is not still in circulation is ISA)
Then there are multiple standards for USB, including 2 for usb1 and 1 for usb2. There are multiple different manufacturers of sata, raid, and ata controllers (intel, nvidia, ati, via, sis, adaptec, etc). Multiple different manufacturers of ethernet (dlink, netgear, linksys, network anywhere, belkin, and an endless list of no name manufacturers). Different manufactures of printers (hp, canon, lexmark, brother, xerox, and many more). Different standards for printer communication (post script and the endless list of PCL revisions). There is odd ball hardware like bar code scanners and biometrics devices. The list goes on just about endlessly...
To make things even more complicated each manufacturer generally has multiple lines of products with their own little twists being pumped out at the same time... and then there is the discontinued hardware that is still in circulation.
Then to top it all of you have to consider that the hardware itself has become more complicated. Some bios chips do as much as an operating system did back in the 80s.
Sorry... but even if things are less convoluted than they were, they are still impossibly convoluted.
He is doing this because you he has been told to. Not all "leaks" are unintentional.
Think about this: If MS decides to publicly announce that they rushed a product they had reason to believe was flawed to market then they could find themselves in even more hot water with early adopters. They would also further alienate their current and future consumer base. If they had come out and been honest about it when it first happened, they would have got a bunch of flak and people would have cooled off. Now that it has gone on so long any admittance on their part of wrong doing could result in litigation and even more consumer unrest.
On the other hand if they continue to keep silent about it the "cloud of uncertainty" mentioned in the article will continue to keep people like me who don't like paying more than $10 on something they can't rely on from buying a 360. Instead buying a 360 drops to the bottom of our list and we only intend to buy a 360 that is second hand and shows signs of having passed the test of time.
So instead they leak the information through a single source with all the trappings of unreliability. The information gets out so that people know what's going on but any attempt to act on it legally runs into issues such as no one being able to prove that what this guy is saying is true or even that this guy exists. In light of the struggle now facing HD-DVD Microsoft might be trying to mitigate the damage by improving sales on the XBOX.
Is this what is happening? Maybe, maybe not.
I tried something like that at first too. Unfortunately, Some usb hd drive enclosures change the way the computer recognizes drive geometry. This doesn't matter if your planning to install a blank drive or even an old drive and format it new, but if you want to reliably read data from a formerly internal hard drive it is better to use something like: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812232002 I haven't tested this with nexstar enclosures though, so they might be exempt.
Oh and magnets pretty much do nothing. Don't even bother trying. A powerful oscillating magnetic field like form an AC electric motor or a DC/AC generator might distort the data, but it is still recoverable and wouldn't even require special hardware.
Bullet to the hard drive = data not on the part of the platters damaged can be recovered
Remove magnets = all data can be recovered
Sledge hammer = any where from 60 to 90 percent of the data can be recovered
so on and so forth.
Let me break it down for you: To remove any chance of data recovery the platters have to be completely destroyed.
Blunt force and shock only destroys the circuitry and mechanical parts reliably. Some of the magnetic fields on the platters are damaged but with a quick disassembly and the right hardware/software the data could be recovered. The formating and files might be a bit garbled but some one trying hard enough would almost certainly be able to reconstruct large portions of the data. You're average computer geek could do it if he know what he was doing.
Removing parts of the drive only works until the platters are taken out and put in another drive of the identical model or run through special equipment.
Damaging or destroying the platters partially still leaves parts of data readable, given access to the proper equipment... something most wouldn't have.
I would suggest an incinerator or strong acid.
All that said. What is the point? Run a good secure erase software on it and call it done. Anything supporting multiple passes with guttman should do an excellent job, leaves the drive functioning, and no one without a lot of skill, hardware, and time, would be able to even tell that there WAS data on the drive before its current format, much less what that data was. As for hooking it up to the computer via USB I personally use this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812232002
COME THE FACK ON! WTF? This is so fricken out of hand.
The worst thing about Vista (other than DRM) is compatibility issues. That is its number one problem and guess what? Right now there are very few "mainstream" programs left which aren't fully compatible with Vista.
I've been using Vista off and on since it came out. In march it reached a point were with my skill set as a computer repair tech I could handle the issues that cropped up day to day. It is now October and I haven't had to "fix" anything in over 2 months. All the software I use including Firefox, Nero, Alcohol 52%, Adobe Photoshop CS2, Adobe Acrobat 8 Pro, Adobe Flash CS3, uTorrent, Winamp 5, Zoom Player Pro, mIrc, Winrar, Trillian Astra and Trillian 3 Pro, FileZilla, Last.fm, Quick Time, Steam (and all associated games that do not require dosbox emulation), Avast! AV for Home, and VMWare Workstation are working perfectly. All the hardware in my machine is fully enabled via manufactures drivers EXCEPT my Razer Barracuda sound card (which is odd because Razer is pretty much the only company with a sound card product who isn't capable of fully supporting Vista... if only I didn't hate creative so much). The only program which is still not fully functioning for me is dosbox (works under 32bit but not 64bit).
Let's address the other common complaints one at a time:
1: The price.
This is certainly a very legitimate concern for those who are upgrading their computers or building a new one. If you purchased Vista through an OEM then you paid about 15 dollars for Vista (how do YOU think dell offers a $300 dollar computer when XP/Vista OEM alone is $150 bux). For those who don't wish to spend so much on Vista for your new computer/upgrade you have many options. If you're upgrading: don't. At this time very few people NEED to upgrade (I needed to in order to learn Vista and get to know its quirks so I wouldn't look like a monkey doing a math problem when I need to fix a Vista computer), and upgrading your OS without upgrading your hardware is almost always a bad idea. For those building a new computer, its not hard to get a down and dirty cheap OEM copy of Vista on ebay, or you can purchase from any of a number of outlets that wont question whether or not you are a licensed OEM if the OEM copy is bought along side a mother board (newegg for example). Besides, if you know enough about computers to build one then you shouldnt need vistas spiffy new security model or easier interface anyway (and honestly no one NEEDS 64bit support). There are more, but I think you get the idea.
2: There is no significant difference between Vista and XP.
If 1 is the difference between Windows 2k (no SP) and Windows 2k (still no SP) and 10 is the difference between Windows 2k (no SP) and Windows XP (no SP). On a scale of 1 to 10 Vista is around a 15 compaired to Windows XP (no SP). For starters not much ever changes from one operating system to another. The difference between Windows 95 and Windows 98 was that windows 98 had better driver support, increased stability, and support for larger file systems (which was added to 95 in the osr2 version). The difference between Windows 98 and Windows ME was improved interface design and organization, removal of the legacy DOS environment as a base for Windows, and a massive increase in bugs. The difference between Windows ME and Windows 2k (which is rather trivial any way since they were released along side each other) is the more stable NT kernel, the improved performance, and some of the worst multi-media capabilities to grace a Windows OS since Windows 3.11 (but then again 2k was never meant for multimedia). The difference between Windows 2k and Windows XP was improved driver handling, better memory management, a vastly better organized user interface, and working multi-media support (and no security was not worse in XP than 2k... for those that weren't paying attention spyware/adware didn't really catch on till 2003, XP was released in 2002).