Actually, WinMain is perfectly compatible with the standard. The standard says only that the compiler must support at least two function signature entry points:
int main()
and
int main(int argc, char *argv[])
Any other entry point is valid as long as the compiler also supports those two.
Actually, Loki is mistaken. Visual C++, nor MFC have *ANY* "extensions" to the language, considering that MFC was designed years before the standard was even close to being final, and the last version of VC++ (6) was designed before the standard was even finalized, much less ratified.
That's like saying a 5 year old version of GCC uses extensions to a standard which did not exist.
Years ago, MS was stopped (using anti-trust laws) from putting blanket restrictions on PC manufacturers that if they sold ANY PC with MS-DOS, they had to pay a license for EVERY PC they sold.
Not exactly true. Microsoft agreed to no longer do this, and signed a binding contract with the government to abide by that agreement. This was a peace offer of sorts to get the DOJ off of MS's back, and avoid a trial. No laws were involved other than contract law.
Dell, IBM, Gateway, Compaq and others sell Linux machines without any MS OS at all, and MS does not receive one red cent of Windows licensing for them.
Microsoft was forbidding companies like Compaq from preinstalling Netscape and forcing them to install only IE
No, that's simply not true. Microsoft did not allow Compaq (or anyone else) to remove IE, they were free to install Netscape if they wanted to in addition to IE.
What most people forget is that it wasn't the breakup of AT&T that allowed competition (although this sped things up a little, and even then it took 10+ years for prices to really begin to become competitive).
What allowed competition in the long distance business was de-regulation (well, at least a relaxing of the regulations).
MCI came in shortly after the breakup, but the breakup wasn't what allowed MCI, but the fact that legal regulation was relaxed enough.
An fs which was completely stolen^H^Hdeveloped by MS:) But thats not the issue; iirc MS has licensed NTFS and they own the specs.
Sure, MS usually takes actions which are highly controversial, their development of NTFS is right among those IMHO (remember hpfs?).
Actually, Microsoft did develop NTFS. Microsoft also wrote HPFS, which NTFS was somewhat based on. In fact, this is one of the primary reasons that HPFS is still 16 bit in OS/2, since IBM doesn't own the code, Microsoft does.
Something important to realize here is that Unix/Linux has MORE of a problem with this than other OS's (such as NT or Mac) for one reason. Unix/Linux uses "string catalogs" for use with internationalization. It's often pretty easy to get an app to use your own custom catalog (just alter your config file), which contains strings that can exploit the problem.
Windows and Mac typically use resources embedded into the application for their internationalization, which can't be altered if you have your security settings set correctly.
This is a serious fundamental flaw in the internationalization of most apps. Don't take it too lightly, or assume that other OS's have the problem to the same degree.
How many large conversions have you been a part of? If any, how many of them went flawlessly?
Chances are, MS has discovered small problems in the rollout and needs to update software every so often, which at the very least requires that you shut down the services and restart them. That can take quite a while if they have to verify database integrity and other sanity checking safeguards.
Netcraft relies on more than just the server identification string. It also analyzes characteristics of the TCP/IP packet to determine the platform it's running on (which can sometimes result in weird responses when things like firewalls are used).
No, this has changed since the netcraft survey was published. In the last 4 weeks MS has migrated nearly all of Hotmail front ends to Win2k. The only obvious servers i've found that are still FreeBSD are the graphics servers which seem to be running a very odd single-tasking server (not apache).
Go ahead, try it yourself. Query Netcraft 10 times, see how many times it comes up Apache (none in my test).
Microsoft has addressed the installation problems by forcing OEMs to not include installation media with a new computer.
Argh... Why does this fallacy live on? The fact of the matter is that OEM's are NOT forced to not include media. Go to any mom and pop or corner We-Build-It-Ourselves PC store and ask them if they give you the Windows CD's with the product. ALL of them will tell you yes, they do. In fact, there is no other option for small OEM's.
Large OEM's, on the other hand, have the OPTION of including media-less liscenses, for the SOLE reason that it's cheaper for the OEM.
I guarantee you that if an OEM decided they wanted to ship media with their systems, they could.
What those flashy news articles fail to cover is that large OEM's pay a radically reduced price for Windows, and in exchange for that price, they agree to certain limitations and liabilities. For instance, the OEM handles tech support, returns, etc... The anti-piracy issue is simply MS saying "Ok, if you want cheap ass prices, you have to guarantee it won't be pirated". That means either BIOS locking your disks, shipping recovery CD's that cannot be used with other systems, or going medialess. Some OEM's are chosing medialess because it saves them the cost of creating a recovery CD and managing it. Smaller OEM's that pay higher prices do not have these limitations
Check out this story.
"However, confessing that even his parents and sister prefer Windows -- which is compatible with far more software programs -- over Linux, Torvalds predicted Linux will not "catch up" with Windows for "perhaps five or 10 years." "
RedHat doesn't install anything by default. You are given the option of choosing exactly what you want and don't want when you install.
Yes and no. I would imagine that very few people go through and choose each of the thousands of package options. More likely, they just set the checkbox for a typical install of certain types, which is as good as a default install.
I think the difference here is that SQL Server is not installed in a default OS installation. Generally speaking, if you're installing SQL Server, you are intentionally doing so and "should" know what you're doing.
Didn't red hat install pirannah by default? I know it certainly installs appache by default.
OEM's will do *ANYTHING* to shave a few bucks off their liscensing. If MS says "Hey, we'll give you and extra $2 discount if you agree not to sell as many machines as you can with Windows, the OEM is right there to jump on it.
The OEM *HAS* the option to decline that $2 discount and give you, their customer more freedom. But instead, they choose to screw you. It's the OEM, not Microsoft "force feeding" them.
Yes, that's how audits have gone in the past, but that's not how they want to do them in the future. In the future, they'll install a program on the server, and have each workstation inventory itself. These liscenses will then be compared automatically against the liscenses assigned to the company.
Thus, if you have 1000 OEM keys, you need 1000 OEM liscenses. If you have 1000 Select keys, you need 1000 Select liscenses.
There is one place to lay blame for not getting CD's. The OEM you buy from. Each OEM can choose to ship CD's if they want to, however, that increases their cost, and thus their profit.
Don't believe me? Go to any small shop you find and see if their custom machines come with CD's. They all do. Why? Because they're not big enough to subscribe to the volume liscensing plans that OEM's get with MS, which allows them to not ship CD's.
Small OEM's *MUST* sell machines with original CD's. They aren't allowed to do it any other way.
The issue here is not the media the OS comes on, but the little liscense keys you enter when you install the software.
An OEM copy has different liscense keys than a select copy (which typically has the same key).
Since the OS they buy from Gateway is supported by Gateway, they want Gateway to handle any technical support. If a user calls up MS tech support and gives them a select liscense key for the OS, then MS is stuck supporting it themselves (depsite having sold the actual liscense to Gateway at a greatly reduced discount in order to offload technical support to them).
Additionally, if a company get's raided by the SPA or whatever, they'll look at the liscense key on each machine. If that key doesn't match up with the number of select liscenses, then the company get's heavily fined, despite having OEM liscenses (which no machine will end up having in the inventory).
What it boils down to is tracking. They want a machine to have it's correct liscense so that it can be identified.
Alright, I appologize for the last statement. It looked like several of my replies had gotten deleted, but somehow the replies moved to elsewhere in the threading.
An article I posted, which includes legitimate links to legitimate sources that counter the claim that Hotmail tried to move to NT get's moderated to -1 and called flamebait.
Yet this article, with *ZERO* references other than "this can be easily found by public means" get's moderated up to a 2 and called informative.
This is the worst fucking journalism on the face of the planet. Of course, this will get deleted, like my other posts which commented on the moderation. So much for unbiased and unedited.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, WinMain is perfectly compatible with the standard. The standard says only that the compiler must support at least two function signature entry points:
int main()
and
int main(int argc, char *argv[])
Any other entry point is valid as long as the compiler also supports those two.
Extensions to what? The C++ standard?
Sorry, the standard simply did not exist when either MFC was created (almost 10 years ago) or when the last version of VC++ was designed.
So how can you extend something that doesn't exist?
Actually, Loki is mistaken. Visual C++, nor MFC have *ANY* "extensions" to the language, considering that MFC was designed years before the standard was even close to being final, and the last version of VC++ (6) was designed before the standard was even finalized, much less ratified.
That's like saying a 5 year old version of GCC uses extensions to a standard which did not exist.
Years ago, MS was stopped (using anti-trust laws) from putting blanket restrictions on PC manufacturers that if they sold ANY PC with MS-DOS, they had to pay a license for EVERY PC they sold.
Not exactly true. Microsoft agreed to no longer do this, and signed a binding contract with the government to abide by that agreement. This was a peace offer of sorts to get the DOJ off of MS's back, and avoid a trial. No laws were involved other than contract law.
No. No. No.
Dell, IBM, Gateway, Compaq and others sell Linux machines without any MS OS at all, and MS does not receive one red cent of Windows licensing for them.
Microsoft was forbidding companies like Compaq from preinstalling Netscape and forcing them to install only IE
No, that's simply not true. Microsoft did not allow Compaq (or anyone else) to remove IE, they were free to install Netscape if they wanted to in addition to IE.
What most people forget is that it wasn't the breakup of AT&T that allowed competition (although this sped things up a little, and even then it took 10+ years for prices to really begin to become competitive).
What allowed competition in the long distance business was de-regulation (well, at least a relaxing of the regulations).
MCI came in shortly after the breakup, but the breakup wasn't what allowed MCI, but the fact that legal regulation was relaxed enough.
An fs which was completely stolen^H^Hdeveloped by MS :) But thats not the issue; iirc MS has licensed NTFS and they own the specs.
Sure, MS usually takes actions which are highly controversial, their development of NTFS is right among those IMHO (remember hpfs?).
Actually, Microsoft did develop NTFS. Microsoft also wrote HPFS, which NTFS was somewhat based on. In fact, this is one of the primary reasons that HPFS is still 16 bit in OS/2, since IBM doesn't own the code, Microsoft does.
>>> Nerds. If this was a Microsoft security issue, you'd be all over it.
>it IS dumbass, its a C/C++ vunerability, its not OS specific.
Partially true. The thing that is OS specific is how locales are implemented in Unix/Linux, which makes it trivial to exploit this problem.
Something important to realize here is that Unix/Linux has MORE of a problem with this than other OS's (such as NT or Mac) for one reason. Unix/Linux uses "string catalogs" for use with internationalization. It's often pretty easy to get an app to use your own custom catalog (just alter your config file), which contains strings that can exploit the problem.
Windows and Mac typically use resources embedded into the application for their internationalization, which can't be altered if you have your security settings set correctly.
This is a serious fundamental flaw in the internationalization of most apps. Don't take it too lightly, or assume that other OS's have the problem to the same degree.
How many large conversions have you been a part of? If any, how many of them went flawlessly?
Chances are, MS has discovered small problems in the rollout and needs to update software every so often, which at the very least requires that you shut down the services and restart them. That can take quite a while if they have to verify database integrity and other sanity checking safeguards.
Netcraft relies on more than just the server identification string. It also analyzes characteristics of the TCP/IP packet to determine the platform it's running on (which can sometimes result in weird responses when things like firewalls are used).
No, this has changed since the netcraft survey was published. In the last 4 weeks MS has migrated nearly all of Hotmail front ends to Win2k. The only obvious servers i've found that are still FreeBSD are the graphics servers which seem to be running a very odd single-tasking server (not apache).
Go ahead, try it yourself. Query Netcraft 10 times, see how many times it comes up Apache (none in my test).
Argh... Why does this fallacy live on? The fact of the matter is that OEM's are NOT forced to not include media. Go to any mom and pop or corner We-Build-It-Ourselves PC store and ask them if they give you the Windows CD's with the product. ALL of them will tell you yes, they do. In fact, there is no other option for small OEM's.
Large OEM's, on the other hand, have the OPTION of including media-less liscenses, for the SOLE reason that it's cheaper for the OEM.
I guarantee you that if an OEM decided they wanted to ship media with their systems, they could.
What those flashy news articles fail to cover is that large OEM's pay a radically reduced price for Windows, and in exchange for that price, they agree to certain limitations and liabilities. For instance, the OEM handles tech support, returns, etc... The anti-piracy issue is simply MS saying "Ok, if you want cheap ass prices, you have to guarantee it won't be pirated". That means either BIOS locking your disks, shipping recovery CD's that cannot be used with other systems, or going medialess. Some OEM's are chosing medialess because it saves them the cost of creating a recovery CD and managing it. Smaller OEM's that pay higher prices do not have these limitations
Check out this story.
"However, confessing that even his parents and sister prefer Windows -- which is compatible with far more software programs -- over Linux, Torvalds predicted Linux will not "catch up" with Windows for "perhaps five or 10 years." "
Yes and no. I would imagine that very few people go through and choose each of the thousands of package options. More likely, they just set the checkbox for a typical install of certain types, which is as good as a default install.
I think the difference here is that SQL Server is not installed in a default OS installation. Generally speaking, if you're installing SQL Server, you are intentionally doing so and "should" know what you're doing.
Didn't red hat install pirannah by default? I know it certainly installs appache by default.
Actually, my old cable modem pushed on average 800-1.5Mb/s, and as high as 2.5Mb/s during off peak times.
My TCP recieve window was set to 64k, since it was a one-way modem (it reduced the number of acks going back at 28.8k).
Oooh.. Poor OEM.
OEM's will do *ANYTHING* to shave a few bucks off their liscensing. If MS says "Hey, we'll give you and extra $2 discount if you agree not to sell as many machines as you can with Windows, the OEM is right there to jump on it.
The OEM *HAS* the option to decline that $2 discount and give you, their customer more freedom. But instead, they choose to screw you. It's the OEM, not Microsoft "force feeding" them.
Yes, that's how audits have gone in the past, but that's not how they want to do them in the future. In the future, they'll install a program on the server, and have each workstation inventory itself. These liscenses will then be compared automatically against the liscenses assigned to the company.
Thus, if you have 1000 OEM keys, you need 1000 OEM liscenses. If you have 1000 Select keys, you need 1000 Select liscenses.
There is one place to lay blame for not getting CD's. The OEM you buy from. Each OEM can choose to ship CD's if they want to, however, that increases their cost, and thus their profit.
Don't believe me? Go to any small shop you find and see if their custom machines come with CD's. They all do. Why? Because they're not big enough to subscribe to the volume liscensing plans that OEM's get with MS, which allows them to not ship CD's.
Small OEM's *MUST* sell machines with original CD's. They aren't allowed to do it any other way.
The issue here is not the media the OS comes on, but the little liscense keys you enter when you install the software.
An OEM copy has different liscense keys than a select copy (which typically has the same key).
Since the OS they buy from Gateway is supported by Gateway, they want Gateway to handle any technical support. If a user calls up MS tech support and gives them a select liscense key for the OS, then MS is stuck supporting it themselves (depsite having sold the actual liscense to Gateway at a greatly reduced discount in order to offload technical support to them).
Additionally, if a company get's raided by the SPA or whatever, they'll look at the liscense key on each machine. If that key doesn't match up with the number of select liscenses, then the company get's heavily fined, despite having OEM liscenses (which no machine will end up having in the inventory).
What it boils down to is tracking. They want a machine to have it's correct liscense so that it can be identified.
Ahh yes.. and that solves the problem of your central datacenter going up in flames, how?
Alright, I appologize for the last statement. It looked like several of my replies had gotten deleted, but somehow the replies moved to elsewhere in the threading.
Threading appears to have some quirks in it.
Very strange
What the fuck is this shit?
An article I posted, which includes legitimate links to legitimate sources that counter the claim that Hotmail tried to move to NT get's moderated to -1 and called flamebait.
Yet this article, with *ZERO* references other than "this can be easily found by public means" get's moderated up to a 2 and called informative.
This is the worst fucking journalism on the face of the planet. Of course, this will get deleted, like my other posts which commented on the moderation. So much for unbiased and unedited.