MS are still releasing patches for NT, despite it having reached 'end of life'. I think there are too many important people who'd be really pissed if they stopped.
But, yeah, the USB thing is a bit of a downer these days:(
Personally, I never upgraded from NT4. It's more stable than any other version (I would know),
I run a mixed NT4/2000 network at work, and we have a lot more reliability problems with the NT4 machines.
Also, its getting to the point where a lot of software being released now won't run on NT4, and a lot of newer hardware is totally unsupported (e.g. most USB devices).
It does have the advantage that there aren't so many patches for it -- most of the "features" modern security holes depend on don't exist in it.
This was inspired by a customs duty problem involving a clock radio - clocks and radios were taxed at different rates, what was the importer meant to do??? They had to come up with some proportional estimate that would satisfy the Customs Dept.
There's no shortage of such examples. My company, for example, runs a web site that sells coffee. Coffee is zero rated, but the delivery charge isn't, which is a pain in the [insert body part of preference].
The latter two cases at present would seem to be a distinction without a difference but that's tax law for you.
The important difference is that if you trade in zero rated goods you can claim back the VAT you paid on any items in order to carry out that trade. The same doesn't apply for exempt goods.
So, for instance, say you build houses (which are zero rated). You buy lots of equipment and pay 17.5% VAT on it, which you can claim back at the end of the quarter. Then you sell a house and have to pay nothing. You can also claim back VAT on our estate agent's fees, I suspect.
But if, for instance, you sold insurance (which is exempt), you couldn't claim any of the VAT you pay on materials you use while you're doing that, not even those directly related to the sale (e.g. the paper that the policy's printed on).
VAT (also called IVA in many European countries) isn't a service tax; it applies to all business transactions that aren't specifically exempted (e.g. sale of food, childrens clothes, newspapers, financial services, houses... that's pretty much it, I think) that are made by organisations with turnover above a certain threshold (so that only serious businesses have to charge it).
Yikes. I was reading this as the introduction of a situation similar to what we have here in the UK, where custom software is subject to VAT at 17.5%. But, any company producing such taxable software is entitled to claim back any VAT that was paid on anything that was crucial to its development. I believe the situation is similar throughout the EU.
Doesn't have to be clarified very far, because what they're talking about is withdrawing a distinction that has already been made, rather than adding a new one. If you want a precise definition, look up what currently isn't subject to sales tax. In future, it will be.
This notion is made rather dubious by the well-publicised tax regulations introduced a few years back that mean that a contractor who is working for only one client at a time is probably, officially speaking, an employee. This means that he might lose those IP rights unless he has a contract that guarantees them. I certainly wouldn't want to run the risk...
Very secure? Running as an Administrator isn't secure. How did it create files in your system directory (assuming %SYSTEMROOT%\SYSTEM32 or anything else under \WINDOWS)? Non-admins don't have permission to create files there.
Erm, yes they do, at least under NT 4.0 Workstation and 2000 Professional with default settings.
Even if they did, it's not hard to change.
True, although it stops a lot of standard software from working, including the drivers for my scanner. Funnily enough, I don't want to have to log in as administrator to use my scanner.
and some even require booting to a command line (nearly impossible in XP/2000).
Utterly impossible in XP/2000, but then I'm fairly sure there isn't actually anything that you'd need to for.
Do you have evidence that you would have to do this?
[FWIW, I've had to remove a CWS variant from Win98, and didn't have to reboot to DOS to do so, although use of a command prompt was necessary to delete files it had installed in C:\Windows\Fonts]
Some of the images were found in unallocated file space, and would have to have been placed there deliberately since cached images from browsing sessions wouldn't have been stored in unallocated space.
If by 'unallocated space' they mean 'not allocated to any files on the system', i.e. 'deleted', then stuff from the cache gets deleted regularly. Your unallocated space is probably full of web cache.
Today, under the Sentencing Guidelines regime with its vast shift of power to the Executive, that disparity has widened to an incredible 500 percent
Yikes. In the UK, this kind of thing is strictly controlled and you can expect a reduction in sentence of the order of a third (I believe) for admitting the charges before trial. However, once you've done that it would become very difficult to appeal, probably impossible in most cases.
Moral of the story - use pop-up blockers. Run AdAware. Run AV software.
This isn't enough. I've come across browser hijack programs that install themselves using IE security failures and which aren't detected by AdAware or AV software. HijackThis found them, but I wouldn't recommend that software to a novice user... you need to actually understand how Windows works a little before you can use something like that.
There are flaws in the design of windows that make it possible for such programs to hide from inexperienced users. You'd think that searching through your hard disk using explorer would let you find all the files on there, right? Of course not. OK, you're smart enough to look at the options and turn on 'view all files'. That must get all files, surely?
Nope. Any files in your fonts directory or ie cache directory that aren't fonts or ie cache files _are not displayed anywhere_. You can't get to them with explorer. At all.
That, if you ask me, is just plain daft, and is a flaw that a lot of this shit relies on.
Another one - its possible on NT based systems to create files that cannot be accessed/modified/deleted by normal Windows programs. For instance, connect to a remote SMB share on an NT/2000 machine, and create a file whose name ends with a dot. Now go to the machine itself and try deleting it. It won't let you!
What is Wonka? Wonka is ACUNIA's cleanroom Virtual Machine for the Java(TM) language. It is extremely portable and self-contained, and can optionally be used with its own real-time executive (OSwald(TM)) to provide a complete solution for embedded devices. It is a full implementation of the Java language, not just a subset. And it's Open Source.
That's unfair on Adobe. They withdrew the complaint practically immediately when they heard that Sklyarov had actually been detained, but the FBI continued pursuing it anyway.
File size checks and hashing means you download all or a good portion of the file only to find out it is crap. Still inefficient and a hassle. (And even worse, some clients leave partially completed downloads available for re-sharing)
Many modern P2P clients (specifically gnutella and gnutella2 clients) implement a system called 'tiger tree hashing' which hashes the file in small blocks, in order to allow you to determine which parts of a file you have downloaded are valid quickly and easily before resharing, and allowing you to keep valid portions but discard corrupted ones.
Even older systems like edonkey2000 hash the file in blocks (in that case of around 10Mb) so you don't have to wait until you get the entire file before validating it.
I don't know about Sasser, but from the descriptions it doesn't intentionally shut down the machine, but rather causes a core service to crash, the same as MSBlast did. XP Home seems to give you a countdown saying that it's going to reboot when this happens; I've seen it happen at least once.
I suspect the power of the laser would need to be carefully calibrated when writing the second layer in order to prevent it from damaging the data on the first layer. Standard burners probably don't support this calibration. They may also not be capable of focussing the writing laser, but only the reading laser.
Mozilla is slow because its GUI is written using a flexible script interpreter, rather than being hard coded in C++.
I don't know why OpenOffice is slow, I've never analysed the way it works in enough detail. I'm sure the reason is fairly obvious to anyone who knows the code base well enough to comment.
Windows isn't really slow, but has some annoying features that have been added recently that can slow you down; for instance in the user interface it will try to open files of certain types to display information about them whenever you perform any operations on them, which isn't exactly helpful if opening the file is too slow...
My only experience of using OSX is that it's blindingly fast. But I've used it for about 3 hours, so that's hardly conclusive.
But you see the pattern -- these systems are slowed down by features that are _necessarily_ slow. You couldn't have the same features without the performance problems they bring. Windows can't give you a preview of an image, or tell you how many files are in an archive, without opening it (although I _really_ wish it'd do it in another thread...). Mozilla can't support its really easy-to-write user interface extensions without an interpreted UI.
The people complaining are people who don't actually want these features, and don't see why they should suffer for them, which is a fair point.
Or write a word processor with a file format that supports graceful degradation when features added in newer versions are used. It isn't as if the concept is new... SGML-based applications supported it in the late 80s, and it is clearly a useful feature.
MS employed people smart enough to realise that the feature set of their software would increase over time, and they were smart enough to design for forward compatibility. The only reason not to is to force the upgrade cycle, and that is why they didn't.
Maybe then we wouldn't need dual-core 4-6 GHz CPUs and 2GB ram to run their new OS.
The reason they're targetting this kind of system is because the hardware will probably be cheaper than Windows itself by the time Longhorn comes out.
I'm sure they'll let you switch off the flash features that need it, though. All recent versions of Windows have been able to degrade to roughly the same performance standard as the previous version if you choose the right options.
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MS are still releasing patches for NT, despite it having reached 'end of life'. I think there are too many important people who'd be really pissed if they stopped.
:(
But, yeah, the USB thing is a bit of a downer these days
Personally, I never upgraded from NT4. It's more stable than any other version (I would know),
I run a mixed NT4/2000 network at work, and we have a lot more reliability problems with the NT4 machines.
Also, its getting to the point where a lot of software being released now won't run on NT4, and a lot of newer hardware is totally unsupported (e.g. most USB devices).
It does have the advantage that there aren't so many patches for it -- most of the "features" modern security holes depend on don't exist in it.
This was inspired by a customs duty problem involving a clock radio - clocks and radios were taxed at different rates, what was the importer meant to do??? They had to come up with some proportional estimate that would satisfy the Customs Dept.
There's no shortage of such examples. My company, for example, runs a web site that sells coffee. Coffee is zero rated, but the delivery charge isn't, which is a pain in the [insert body part of preference].
The latter two cases at present would seem to be a distinction without a difference but that's tax law for you.
The important difference is that if you trade in zero rated goods you can claim back the VAT you paid on any items in order to carry out that trade. The same doesn't apply for exempt goods.
So, for instance, say you build houses (which are zero rated). You buy lots of equipment and pay 17.5% VAT on it, which you can claim back at the end of the quarter. Then you sell a house and have to pay nothing. You can also claim back VAT on our estate agent's fees, I suspect.
But if, for instance, you sold insurance (which is exempt), you couldn't claim any of the VAT you pay on materials you use while you're doing that, not even those directly related to the sale (e.g. the paper that the policy's printed on).
I get 404s from the first two, and a vaguely relevant document from the third.
VAT (also called IVA in many European countries) isn't a service tax; it applies to all business transactions that aren't specifically exempted (e.g. sale of food, childrens clothes, newspapers, financial services, houses... that's pretty much it, I think) that are made by organisations with turnover above a certain threshold (so that only serious businesses have to charge it).
Yikes. I was reading this as the introduction of a situation similar to what we have here in the UK, where custom software is subject to VAT at 17.5%. But, any company producing such taxable software is entitled to claim back any VAT that was paid on anything that was crucial to its development. I believe the situation is similar throughout the EU.
Doesn't have to be clarified very far, because what they're talking about is withdrawing a distinction that has already been made, rather than adding a new one. If you want a precise definition, look up what currently isn't subject to sales tax. In future, it will be.
This notion is made rather dubious by the well-publicised tax regulations introduced a few years back that mean that a contractor who is working for only one client at a time is probably, officially speaking, an employee. This means that he might lose those IP rights unless he has a contract that guarantees them. I certainly wouldn't want to run the risk...
Very secure? Running as an Administrator isn't secure. How did it create files in your system directory (assuming %SYSTEMROOT%\SYSTEM32 or anything else under \WINDOWS)? Non-admins don't have permission to create files there.
Erm, yes they do, at least under NT 4.0 Workstation and 2000 Professional with default settings.
Even if they did, it's not hard to change.
True, although it stops a lot of standard software from working, including the drivers for my scanner. Funnily enough, I don't want to have to log in as administrator to use my scanner.
Where exactly does it say this in TFA? I can't find it.
and some even require booting to a command line (nearly impossible in XP/2000).
Utterly impossible in XP/2000, but then I'm fairly sure there isn't actually anything that you'd need to for.
Do you have evidence that you would have to do this?
[FWIW, I've had to remove a CWS variant from Win98, and didn't have to reboot to DOS to do so, although use of a command prompt was necessary to delete files it had installed in C:\Windows\Fonts]
What I don't get is this:
Some of the images were found in unallocated file space, and would have to have been placed there deliberately since cached images from browsing sessions wouldn't have been stored in unallocated space.
If by 'unallocated space' they mean 'not allocated to any files on the system', i.e. 'deleted', then stuff from the cache gets deleted regularly. Your unallocated space is probably full of web cache.
Today, under the Sentencing Guidelines regime with its vast shift of power to the Executive, that disparity has widened to an incredible 500 percent
Yikes. In the UK, this kind of thing is strictly controlled and you can expect a reduction in sentence of the order of a third (I believe) for admitting the charges before trial. However, once you've done that it would become very difficult to appeal, probably impossible in most cases.
Moral of the story - use pop-up blockers. Run AdAware. Run AV software.
This isn't enough. I've come across browser hijack programs that install themselves using IE security failures and which aren't detected by AdAware or AV software. HijackThis found them, but I wouldn't recommend that software to a novice user... you need to actually understand how Windows works a little before you can use something like that.
There are flaws in the design of windows that make it possible for such programs to hide from inexperienced users. You'd think that searching through your hard disk using explorer would let you find all the files on there, right? Of course not. OK, you're smart enough to look at the options and turn on 'view all files'. That must get all files, surely?
Nope. Any files in your fonts directory or ie cache directory that aren't fonts or ie cache files _are not displayed anywhere_. You can't get to them with explorer. At all.
That, if you ask me, is just plain daft, and is a flaw that a lot of this shit relies on.
Another one - its possible on NT based systems to create files that cannot be accessed/modified/deleted by normal Windows programs. For instance, connect to a remote SMB share on an NT/2000 machine, and create a file whose name ends with a dot. Now go to the machine itself and try deleting it. It won't let you!
although *sigh* there is no entirely free software or open source Java implementation at this moment
Ahem (BSD-ish license).
What is Wonka?
Wonka is ACUNIA's cleanroom Virtual Machine for the Java(TM) language. It is extremely portable and self-contained, and can optionally be used with its own real-time executive (OSwald(TM)) to provide a complete solution for embedded devices. It is a full implementation of the Java language, not just a subset. And it's Open Source.
That's unfair on Adobe. They withdrew the complaint practically immediately when they heard that Sklyarov had actually been detained, but the FBI continued pursuing it anyway.
File size checks and hashing means you download all or a good portion of the file only to find out it is crap. Still inefficient and a hassle. (And even worse, some clients leave partially completed downloads available for re-sharing)
Many modern P2P clients (specifically gnutella and gnutella2 clients) implement a system called 'tiger tree hashing' which hashes the file in small blocks, in order to allow you to determine which parts of a file you have downloaded are valid quickly and easily before resharing, and allowing you to keep valid portions but discard corrupted ones.
Even older systems like edonkey2000 hash the file in blocks (in that case of around 10Mb) so you don't have to wait until you get the entire file before validating it.
Funnily enough, I get that message despite the fact that I run Win2K. I do, however, use a proxy server that strips out my HTTP User-Agent headers.
I don't know about Sasser, but from the descriptions it doesn't intentionally shut down the machine, but rather causes a core service to crash, the same as MSBlast did. XP Home seems to give you a countdown saying that it's going to reboot when this happens; I've seen it happen at least once.
savy enough to get a keygen of kazza
Some of us consider ourselves savvy enough to not get keygens from kazaa.
Besides, the last MS Windows keygen I saw always gave out the same keys. WTF use is that?
I suspect the power of the laser would need to be carefully calibrated when writing the second layer in order to prevent it from damaging the data on the first layer. Standard burners probably don't support this calibration. They may also not be capable of focussing the writing laser, but only the reading laser.
Mozilla is slow because its GUI is written using a flexible script interpreter, rather than being hard coded in C++.
I don't know why OpenOffice is slow, I've never analysed the way it works in enough detail. I'm sure the reason is fairly obvious to anyone who knows the code base well enough to comment.
Windows isn't really slow, but has some annoying features that have been added recently that can slow you down; for instance in the user interface it will try to open files of certain types to display information about them whenever you perform any operations on them, which isn't exactly helpful if opening the file is too slow...
My only experience of using OSX is that it's blindingly fast. But I've used it for about 3 hours, so that's hardly conclusive.
But you see the pattern -- these systems are slowed down by features that are _necessarily_ slow. You couldn't have the same features without the performance problems they bring. Windows can't give you a preview of an image, or tell you how many files are in an archive, without opening it (although I _really_ wish it'd do it in another thread...). Mozilla can't support its really easy-to-write user interface extensions without an interpreted UI.
The people complaining are people who don't actually want these features, and don't see why they should suffer for them, which is a fair point.
Or write a word processor with a file format that supports graceful degradation when features added in newer versions are used. It isn't as if the concept is new... SGML-based applications supported it in the late 80s, and it is clearly a useful feature.
MS employed people smart enough to realise that the feature set of their software would increase over time, and they were smart enough to design for forward compatibility. The only reason not to is to force the upgrade cycle, and that is why they didn't.
Maybe then we wouldn't need dual-core 4-6 GHz CPUs and 2GB ram to run their new OS.
The reason they're targetting this kind of system is because the hardware will probably be cheaper than Windows itself by the time Longhorn comes out.
I'm sure they'll let you switch off the flash features that need it, though. All recent versions of Windows have been able to degrade to roughly the same performance standard as the previous version if you choose the right options.