What is running in Windows?
There is a processlist that seems to be missing stuff.
This is a list of names that the processes claim
Obviously you haven't run any NT based version of Windows. The task manager shows all processes as their executable name, there's no way you can hide anything. The Vista task manager can even go so far as to tell you the actual path to the process and the command line parameters which were used to execute it. Only in Windows 9x could you "hide" a process in task manager, however the information on all processes could easily be seen in WinTop, an application included in the Windows 95 Kernel tools.
Some huge pile of DLLs from wherever.
Using the System Information tool you can easily view all of the DLLs loaded in the system. In Windows Vista the dynamic linker can even track which applications are using any specific DLL
End Process that just laughs at you.
This was mostly again a problem in Windows 9x, under any NT based OS the process will immediately be terminated when you click the button, unless it is waiting for I/O from a device. Windows Vista addresses this issue as well by allowing cancellation of I/O requests.
Is the default still to hide viruses (aka system files)?
Oh come on, were you seriously one of those people who thought WINDOWS.EXE was an actual system file?
*shudder* I too have done the 386 kernel compile. Now those horrible memories of lost days have come back to me.
After that though, I would have to agree that the 386 doesn't run Linux too badly at all. I was running Apache, Samba, Bind and AppleTalk file sharing and it was able to handle them all really well.
I've installed Vista now on a few low end configurations, the lowest being a Pentium 3 733Mhz with 500 MB of RAM. This is a pretty low end system and here's what I've found. Overall the system seems to be much faster and more reponsive than XP in quite a lot of ways, but there are a few places where it is slower. I find explorer to be WAY faster than it was in XP. The Start Menu is insanely lags unless you turn off the feature for 'Displaying Newly Installed Programs'. Media Player plays video fairly well however the interface itself is slow to react to button presses etc. Most things seem to be very quick, although program load times seem to be slower.
On the other hand, my machine at work runs Windows. It reboots every other time I put in a DVD. It needs a reboot every time I change my login password. It needs a reboot any time software updates get pushed to it. And every once in a while it needs a reboot "just because." I'm lucky to go a week without needing a reboot.
Oh come on...Windows doesn't require a reboot to play a DVD. Even in Windows 95 changing your logon password didn't require a reboot. I agree that some software updates to require a reboot, but that is due to a to the fact that there used to be no way to determine which processes are using a dynamically linked library, and this is fixed in Vista.
Maybe your Windows machine at work is running some group policy combines with a lot of mismanaged SMS server pushes, but even in those kind of environments I've never seen you have to reboot that much.
Maybe they really are desperate. Users want security, but Microsoft can't change too much in the OS without breaking compatibility with apps that were written for older versions of their OS. So what were they going to do? Asking the user for confirmation when doing a potential 'dangerous' operation was the easiest thing to implement for them.
No, Microsoft is not worried in the least about compatability with older apps. When I Install Visual Studio 2005 (or any version of Visual Studio for that matter), I receive a report that it is not compatible in some way with Vista. When I click the details it tells me that I should expect a patch from Microsoft, that's it. They have also removed a few older APIs and things like WINHLP32.EXE. When you click the information on why your.HLP file won't run, it simply tells you that it's gone now. Windows Vista had broken compatability with many applications I have tried to run, and all Microsoft has really done to show their "concern" about compatability is have the Solution Center tell you to obtain a patch from the vendor.
Usually the MSI installers are copied to C:\Windows\Installer so that they can be accessed through Add/Remove programs and also for repairing the installation if a component is missing. If a program is asking for the old MSI file, it is probably trying to uninstall the older version rather than upgrade it. Either way, the installer should be in the C:\Windows\Installer folder under a GUID.
Actually, when you install XP you have to specify the Administrator password before you can create your user account. What you are talking about is peobably from retailers who pre-install copies and are leaving the admin pass blank to avoid having people call them to get the password later on.
The fact that he got *ANYWHERE* with the so-called heightened threat and supposed increased security at establishments like this is case for concern.
Dude, Los Alamos is a huge installation, covering a large amount of land, most of which is empty fields and forest. TA-33 alone probably covers several square miles of land area, including a few high security areas (which he was nowhere near). There is no point spending tons of their budget securing an empty area when they could divert the funding to areas that do require the security.
Case in point: Los Almos currently has worse security than many New York City office towers!!!!
Comparing the security of the entire Los Alamos base to the security of a few office buildings is hardly a fair comparison. A better comparison would be comparing the security of Los Alamos to the entire Manhattan island. Of course some office building have high security, much like the high clearance areas of Los Alamos.
I don't care if it's not a "super clasffied ultra magic" section of Los Almos...it's the point that these sort of institutions often consider that security by obscurity ("who really wants to break into TA-33?") is adequate.
It is not security by obscurity, it is simply that there is no reason to defend that area of TA-33 (thus the fact that there are no guard towers or fences in that region). In their own documents, TA-33 is described as this:
TA-33, the HP Site is remotely located at the southeastern boundary of the Labratory and has proven ideal for experiments that do not require daily oversight and for those requiring isolation. An intelligence technology group and the National Radioastronomy Observatory's Very Large Array telescope are located at this site. A guard station controls access to this part of the site for security reasons.
Does this sound like the kind of area that is providing a huge breach of national security?
Because it is there by default, and if you have it checked then reasons of spam are obvious.
I think that the White Pages are responsible for most of the spam problems on Hotmail. One of my Hotmail accounts was created way back in '96 when it was a good idea to list yourself in the White Pages. That account receives tons of spam a day, all of it addressed to myself and all of the other listed Hotmail members who are alphabetically near me. The other account that I created for use with Windows Messenger receives maybe 3 spam messages a week.
I totally agree. After a month of playing Warcraft III, I found myself incredibly bored of it. The engine is amazing and the graphics are great, but it just isn't as fun. Lately, I've gone back to Warcraft II bnet edition and Starcraft.
I doubt that most of these things can be flashed in our modern protected mode OS's. That is usually the reason you usually have to boot off of a DOS floppy to flash your system and video card BIOS. Unless the operating system enables the proper interrupt line for the BIOS's flash mechanism, there would be no way for the CPU to pass along the message. This would generate an 'unhandled exception' error in Windows, just like when you try to do a lot of old school low level things that used to work in DOS. Unless the manufacturer includes the proper VXD or SYS file, with support for the flashing mechanism built in, I don't think Windows will allow it to happen.
If you take a Windows 95/98/Me install "out of the box" and a similar RedHat 6.x install, you will find that Windows does not install with file sharing on by default and RedHat does. Older RH installs also include a lot of extra services (ie. bind and Apache) and they are running by default. Even Win2K Pro (not server of course) does not have IIS enabled right after installation. What we have learned is that from a default install (of RedHat at least) Linux will most likely get trashed. I have seen it many times with my own boxes.
It also seems that exploiting most of the problems on Windows is often much harder than a Linux exploit. Try placing a default NT 4 install and a default RH 6 install on the net and see what happens. The RH box will be taken by a kiddie in a matter of hours, the NT box will most likely not get hacked at all, until Code Red finds it.
Uh no? Open Source == Good. Closed Source == Bad. The GPL only has restrictions to protect certain freedoms. Just like there is a restriction on murder to protect people right to life.
This entire statement makes no point in the argument for the GPL, it just goes to prove how much you've been brainwashed into believing the GPL is something more than it is. Comparing the GPL with the right to live is also the worst analogy I've ever seen!
As for restrictions, the GPL is actually restrictive in a way. What turns most developers off of it is the fact that anytime you modify GPL'd code, you must also provide your modifications under the GPL. This is not a true freedom for a developer (he is forced to submit the changes), nor does it protect any freedoms except those of Richard Stallman and the FSF.
Go to run under the Start menu and type 'mplayer2'. This is Media Player 6.4, which is always installed alongside 7 and 8 but is ten times faster (and it gives you the ability to set codec options).
I actually use Macs for the same reasons that you listed as reasons that you prefer PC's.
Personally, I purchase PC's, not because of price, but because I can choose quality parts that I know will work.
I have found that much of the PC hardware that is available is constantly riddled with annoying problems. I have found the Mac hardware to be of good quality and well tested. For example, earlier this year I had to wait for a BIOS flash so I can use my creative sound card and ATI video together. Apple would never have rushed a Mac system with the same problems. As for having a choice, I cound have bought another motherboard, but the competition's boards either didn't perform half as well, had other bugs, or were priced well out of my range.
Then there's the OS. OS 9.2 crashes like a monkey on crack...
I always hear of people having crashing problems with the classic MacOS's. Personally, I have never had my Mac crash under 9.1. Most of the crashing problems you are having are most likely related to a very outdated or faulty extension. Most PC users never review their extensions and disable anything, which is the cause for many problems. You have to remember that the MacOS is very old, and there are a lot of dated and buggy INITs that ship with software. Many of teh MacOS's features such as "Drag and Drop" and "Clipping" were first introduced via extensions and integrated into the System later on, leaving a lot of products which install them just to be sure.
The same thing can be compared to Linux users who complain that Windows crashes all the time, when their system trays are full of adware and they are loading a million old school VXDs at boot time. Of course the system is going to be unstable if you just install anything without a second thought.
Software/OS... I need professional quality tools and reliability that OS 10.1 just doesn't give me.
I agree on this point. I have so far found OSX to be so cumbersome that I have ended up using Windows or Classic to do the job. Though after reading this review my hopes are a lot higher for Jaguar...
I'm not knocking Windows and Linux, I use them both for separate functions, but I have found the Mac to be a very reliable solution in many places.
If we ever got legislation mandating open formats for all public documents, Microsoft would be a minor player in the software world within five years.
I doubt that MS would have a problem with this. Look at one of MS's major products, Visual Studio. Anybody could download a copy of DJGPP or Borland's compiler, and just write the code in vim. Instead many people purchase Visual Studio because they prefer the IDE and it's tools. The same with MS Word, you could just as easily write the document in WordPad (of which the source is available). But they don't, because they actually perfer the interface.
A lot of people attribute MS's success to their "closed" formats, but they do actually make some good tools. If there was a mandate for open formats, MS would probably just focus on building better tools to work with those formats.
They GPL'd the Quake code only because it had already been leaked all over the net. If it had not been stolen from Sierra's FTP site, the code would probably not have been GPL'd so quickly.
Re:"Reduced" Instruction Set Computer???
on
PowerPC Goes 64 bit
·
· Score: 1
I am not 100% sure, but I think the extra 160 extra instructions are for Altivec, not the general PPC instruction set.
Apple has switched architectures before. Remember that old Macs were origionally Motorola 68k CPU's, and when Apple switched to PPC, they needed to be able to use their existing software base. Their solution was to include an on board 68k emulation chip that translated the old 68k instructions to PPC. This worked so well that they didn't even bother to remove most of the 68K code from their OS (rumour has it that it is still not all gone even in OS9).
I suspect that the new chip would either support some kind of backwards compatability with PPC32 code, or they will include another emulation chip.
You could be Mr no priv Guest user and get it to esclate you to root because you can see a window.
You misunderstand. A non-priviledged user must have accesss to an interactive service that is running as the LocalSystem user. The reality is that you will rarely ever see one of these Windows. Not too many pieces of software do this these days, as this vulnerability is actually pretty old.
I've seen production Linux servers drop dead in their tracks because of SCSI driver bugs. Our tape backup program would attempt to backup to our SCSI tape drive, and then suddenly you would be looking at a kernel panic and a stack dump.
I've also seen some OSX boxes core dump while running iTunes, because of their USB sound drivers.
Every OS crashes because of driver problems. Windows is not the only one.
Slashdot Mirror
Obviously you haven't run any NT based version of Windows. The task manager shows all processes as their executable name, there's no way you can hide anything. The Vista task manager can even go so far as to tell you the actual path to the process and the command line parameters which were used to execute it. Only in Windows 9x could you "hide" a process in task manager, however the information on all processes could easily be seen in WinTop, an application included in the Windows 95 Kernel tools.
Using the System Information tool you can easily view all of the DLLs loaded in the system. In Windows Vista the dynamic linker can even track which applications are using any specific DLL
This was mostly again a problem in Windows 9x, under any NT based OS the process will immediately be terminated when you click the button, unless it is waiting for I/O from a device. Windows Vista addresses this issue as well by allowing cancellation of I/O requests.
Oh come on, were you seriously one of those people who thought WINDOWS.EXE was an actual system file?
*shudder* I too have done the 386 kernel compile. Now those horrible memories of lost days have come back to me.
After that though, I would have to agree that the 386 doesn't run Linux too badly at all. I was running Apache, Samba, Bind and AppleTalk file sharing and it was able to handle them all really well.
I've installed Vista now on a few low end configurations, the lowest being a Pentium 3 733Mhz with 500 MB of RAM. This is a pretty low end system and here's what I've found. Overall the system seems to be much faster and more reponsive than XP in quite a lot of ways, but there are a few places where it is slower. I find explorer to be WAY faster than it was in XP. The Start Menu is insanely lags unless you turn off the feature for 'Displaying Newly Installed Programs'. Media Player plays video fairly well however the interface itself is slow to react to button presses etc. Most things seem to be very quick, although program load times seem to be slower.
Obviously this "Debian GNU/Linux" page is some Microsoft product, as we all know that Linux cannot possibly contain security flaws.
Oh come on...Windows doesn't require a reboot to play a DVD. Even in Windows 95 changing your logon password didn't require a reboot. I agree that some software updates to require a reboot, but that is due to a to the fact that there used to be no way to determine which processes are using a dynamically linked library, and this is fixed in Vista.
Maybe your Windows machine at work is running some group policy combines with a lot of mismanaged SMS server pushes, but even in those kind of environments I've never seen you have to reboot that much.
No, Microsoft is not worried in the least about compatability with older apps. When I Install Visual Studio 2005 (or any version of Visual Studio for that matter), I receive a report that it is not compatible in some way with Vista. When I click the details it tells me that I should expect a patch from Microsoft, that's it. They have also removed a few older APIs and things like WINHLP32.EXE. When you click the information on why your .HLP file won't run, it simply tells you that it's gone now. Windows Vista had broken compatability with many applications I have tried to run, and all Microsoft has really done to show their "concern" about compatability is have the Solution Center tell you to obtain a patch from the vendor.
Usually the MSI installers are copied to C:\Windows\Installer so that they can be accessed through Add/Remove programs and also for repairing the installation if a component is missing. If a program is asking for the old MSI file, it is probably trying to uninstall the older version rather than upgrade it. Either way, the installer should be in the C:\Windows\Installer folder under a GUID.
Actually, when you install XP you have to specify the Administrator password before you can create your user account. What you are talking about is peobably from retailers who pre-install copies and are leaving the admin pass blank to avoid having people call them to get the password later on.
The fact that he got *ANYWHERE* with the so-called heightened threat and supposed increased security at establishments like this is case for concern.
Dude, Los Alamos is a huge installation, covering a large amount of land, most of which is empty fields and forest. TA-33 alone probably covers several square miles of land area, including a few high security areas (which he was nowhere near). There is no point spending tons of their budget securing an empty area when they could divert the funding to areas that do require the security.
Case in point: Los Almos currently has worse security than many New York City office towers!!!!
Comparing the security of the entire Los Alamos base to the security of a few office buildings is hardly a fair comparison. A better comparison would be comparing the security of Los Alamos to the entire Manhattan island. Of course some office building have high security, much like the high clearance areas of Los Alamos.
I don't care if it's not a "super clasffied ultra magic" section of Los Almos...it's the point that these sort of institutions often consider that security by obscurity ("who really wants to break into TA-33?") is adequate.
It is not security by obscurity, it is simply that there is no reason to defend that area of TA-33 (thus the fact that there are no guard towers or fences in that region). In their own documents, TA-33 is described as this:
Does this sound like the kind of area that is providing a huge breach of national security?
Because it is there by default, and if you have it checked then reasons of spam are obvious.
I think that the White Pages are responsible for most of the spam problems on Hotmail. One of my Hotmail accounts was created way back in '96 when it was a good idea to list yourself in the White Pages. That account receives tons of spam a day, all of it addressed to myself and all of the other listed Hotmail members who are alphabetically near me. The other account that I created for use with Windows Messenger receives maybe 3 spam messages a week.
For all you people still creating batch files, here is an elegant solution.
I totally agree. After a month of playing Warcraft III, I found myself incredibly bored of it. The engine is amazing and the graphics are great, but it just isn't as fun. Lately, I've gone back to Warcraft II bnet edition and Starcraft.
I doubt that most of these things can be flashed in our modern protected mode OS's. That is usually the reason you usually have to boot off of a DOS floppy to flash your system and video card BIOS. Unless the operating system enables the proper interrupt line for the BIOS's flash mechanism, there would be no way for the CPU to pass along the message. This would generate an 'unhandled exception' error in Windows, just like when you try to do a lot of old school low level things that used to work in DOS. Unless the manufacturer includes the proper VXD or SYS file, with support for the flashing mechanism built in, I don't think Windows will allow it to happen.
If you take a Windows 95/98/Me install "out of the box" and a similar RedHat 6.x install, you will find that Windows does not install with file sharing on by default and RedHat does. Older RH installs also include a lot of extra services (ie. bind and Apache) and they are running by default. Even Win2K Pro (not server of course) does not have IIS enabled right after installation. What we have learned is that from a default install (of RedHat at least) Linux will most likely get trashed. I have seen it many times with my own boxes.
It also seems that exploiting most of the problems on Windows is often much harder than a Linux exploit. Try placing a default NT 4 install and a default RH 6 install on the net and see what happens. The RH box will be taken by a kiddie in a matter of hours, the NT box will most likely not get hacked at all, until Code Red finds it.
Sorry, after reading your post again, I see that I misread your post and you did not make such a comparison.
Uh no? Open Source == Good. Closed Source == Bad. The GPL only has restrictions to protect certain freedoms. Just like there is a restriction on murder to protect people right to life.
This entire statement makes no point in the argument for the GPL, it just goes to prove how much you've been brainwashed into believing the GPL is something more than it is. Comparing the GPL with the right to live is also the worst analogy I've ever seen!
As for restrictions, the GPL is actually restrictive in a way. What turns most developers off of it is the fact that anytime you modify GPL'd code, you must also provide your modifications under the GPL. This is not a true freedom for a developer (he is forced to submit the changes), nor does it protect any freedoms except those of Richard Stallman and the FSF.
Go to run under the Start menu and type 'mplayer2'. This is Media Player 6.4, which is always installed alongside 7 and 8 but is ten times faster (and it gives you the ability to set codec options).
I actually use Macs for the same reasons that you listed as reasons that you prefer PC's.
Personally, I purchase PC's, not because of price, but because I can choose quality parts that I know will work.
I have found that much of the PC hardware that is available is constantly riddled with annoying problems. I have found the Mac hardware to be of good quality and well tested. For example, earlier this year I had to wait for a BIOS flash so I can use my creative sound card and ATI video together. Apple would never have rushed a Mac system with the same problems. As for having a choice, I cound have bought another motherboard, but the competition's boards either didn't perform half as well, had other bugs, or were priced well out of my range.
Then there's the OS. OS 9.2 crashes like a monkey on crack...
I always hear of people having crashing problems with the classic MacOS's. Personally, I have never had my Mac crash under 9.1. Most of the crashing problems you are having are most likely related to a very outdated or faulty extension. Most PC users never review their extensions and disable anything, which is the cause for many problems. You have to remember that the MacOS is very old, and there are a lot of dated and buggy INITs that ship with software. Many of teh MacOS's features such as "Drag and Drop" and "Clipping" were first introduced via extensions and integrated into the System later on, leaving a lot of products which install them just to be sure.
The same thing can be compared to Linux users who complain that Windows crashes all the time, when their system trays are full of adware and they are loading a million old school VXDs at boot time. Of course the system is going to be unstable if you just install anything without a second thought.
Software/OS... I need professional quality tools and reliability that OS 10.1 just doesn't give me.
I agree on this point. I have so far found OSX to be so cumbersome that I have ended up using Windows or Classic to do the job. Though after reading this review my hopes are a lot higher for Jaguar...
I'm not knocking Windows and Linux, I use them both for separate functions, but I have found the Mac to be a very reliable solution in many places.
If we ever got legislation mandating open formats for all public documents, Microsoft would be a minor player in the software world within five years.
I doubt that MS would have a problem with this. Look at one of MS's major products, Visual Studio. Anybody could download a copy of DJGPP or Borland's compiler, and just write the code in vim. Instead many people purchase Visual Studio because they prefer the IDE and it's tools. The same with MS Word, you could just as easily write the document in WordPad (of which the source is available). But they don't, because they actually perfer the interface.
A lot of people attribute MS's success to their "closed" formats, but they do actually make some good tools. If there was a mandate for open formats, MS would probably just focus on building better tools to work with those formats.
They GPL'd the Quake code only because it had already been leaked all over the net. If it had not been stolen from Sierra's FTP site, the code would probably not have been GPL'd so quickly.
I am not 100% sure, but I think the extra 160 extra instructions are for Altivec, not the general PPC instruction set.
Apple has switched architectures before. Remember that old Macs were origionally Motorola 68k CPU's, and when Apple switched to PPC, they needed to be able to use their existing software base. Their solution was to include an on board 68k emulation chip that translated the old 68k instructions to PPC. This worked so well that they didn't even bother to remove most of the 68K code from their OS (rumour has it that it is still not all gone even in OS9).
I suspect that the new chip would either support some kind of backwards compatability with PPC32 code, or they will include another emulation chip.
You could be Mr no priv Guest user and get it to esclate you to root because you can see a window.
You misunderstand. A non-priviledged user must have accesss to an interactive service that is running as the LocalSystem user. The reality is that you will rarely ever see one of these Windows. Not too many pieces of software do this these days, as this vulnerability is actually pretty old.
I've seen production Linux servers drop dead in their tracks because of SCSI driver bugs. Our tape backup program would attempt to backup to our SCSI tape drive, and then suddenly you would be looking at a kernel panic and a stack dump.
I've also seen some OSX boxes core dump while running iTunes, because of their USB sound drivers.
Every OS crashes because of driver problems. Windows is not the only one.
You need to get a copy of vim(vi improved). It supports every feature that you have listed.