Why does this matter? If a flaw is unknown, its not being exploited and no damage is being done. A security vulnerability is not a problem until someone discovers it.
It's a problem because it means the user has to install a patch later. If I bought a TV from Sony which developed a fault due to a design flaw, I'd expect the store I bought it from to replace it with a new version that doesn't have the same flaw.
I see the point you're making in the 1st part of your post though:-)
I always considered KDE to be a "desktop environement", and bash, zsh and the rest to be "shells". I'd normally use a shell inside a terminal window in my desktop environment. Calling a desktop environment a shell just confuses things.
I'm not really into games, so don't own a fancy graphics card that most games (including racer) require to get good performance and fancy graphics. The screenshot was taken on my PC because I didn't want to steal one from Racer's homepage.
I think with Limewire, its the features that make it good rather than the way it looks. Multiple search results open simultaneously makes it a lot more useable than Kazaa Lite. Also, I don't have to get used to another P2P client for using at home or at work - it runs just fine on Macs, PCs and Suns.
I do however think that things like Qt are better. You get it to look the way you want, and generally get better performance.
I'm not of the opinion that an OS consists entirely of its kernel. I'd say that Bash is a part of any Linux operating system. It's not part of the kernel, but is part of the OS. KDE isn't though. The OS works just fine without it. Does MS's OS work just fine without Explorer? I'm not saying this is a bad thing. I'm just pointing out that MS consider Explorer to be part of the OS.
That's not a bad product either. If you don't like the Java look and feel, you can tell it to look like Windows. The Windows look doesn't fit in as well on my desktop though.
The majority of MS's income is from corporate/business customers. For these customers, is there anything that XP does better than Win2K? And Win2K's got tha advantage of having been around for longer, and having more of the bugs ironed out.
I was talking about Redhat. Other than one MS SQL bug, and a handful of IIS ones, all the Microsoft security problems I've heard of are entirely part of their operating system (this includes the Explorer ones, since MS say its a tightly integrated part of the operating system). If KDE had lots of security vulnerabilities, I'd dump it and use Gnome instead - it's just an application (or a suite of applications). I know there are a lot of Apache, Sendmail, etc, security alerts too, but these products have never been called part of the OS. They are applications that you can choose not to install when you're installing the OS.
Linux has millions of people looking through its source code. More than Microsoft could feasibly have. And yet, your post seems to indicate that Windows has about the same amount of fixes (service packs containing multiple fixes) as Linux in the equivalent amount of time. I wonder how many more flaws there are that haven't been discovered yet?
Microsoft did well in this instance, and perhaps this is the start of their focus on security.
You'd think though, that with a software company that's as big as Microsoft, they'd be able to educate their programmers to avoid problems like this in the first place. Yes, everyone makes mistakes, but if you've got >=10 years experience, it's unlikely unless you're just not bothering to pay attention.
Yeah, but Microsoft patented the bit of it that all desktop software writers will want to use (the Windows.Forms package), thus ensuring that no competing implementation of.Net will be as good as Microsoft's for desktop stuff.
I would have thought they'd let people work from home, but insist that any sensitive data is always encrypted before sending anywhere. That way, the ISP can look at the data if they want, but it could take them a while to break 2048-bit RSA or something like that.
I agree. Much better than having the difference between version 6 and version 7 being significantly less than the difference between version 4 and version 6.
Seriously, it's like a race to see who can have the highest version number sometimes. That doesn't impress me. This is almost as bad as the MHz myth. Internet Explorer is still at version 6, and people like it.
Yup. I like the beachball more though. At the time I had a Sinclair QL, and did a bit of programming which usually turned out to be text-based software. It was easy to mess with the QL's character set to make an Apple-style beachball and make it spin using multiple slightly different looking characters. If X ever had the need for a busy cursor like that, I'd love it to be the beachball.
Using a standard that's different from what all the surrounding countries use is just silly. It'll annoy people when they make the 2 hour trek to a neighbouring country to visit a friend and their phone doesn't work there. Also, I'm sure some of the Iraqis that will be living there will still have mobile phones that use their current standard. Why force them all to buy new phones? That's not being very friendly.
In XP Pro it handles End Task the same way as Windows 2000 does. I use it when I log out and forget to close a Cygwin window for example - works fine there.
Oops - yeah I forogt about that. Talking of Bob, do you know of anywhere you can download it from? We were talking about it at work earlier this week and thought it would be funny to get it on a PC.
Access isn't really a product - it's a toy that you get free with Office to teach your children about databases before they get to use a real one.
I can't comment on Word as I rarely use word processors anynway. Developer studio isn't a bad product - despite lacking a few features (including an ANSI C compiler). Windows NT is really not a good product compared to some things they offer.
Slashdot Mirror
If anyone missed the first article, here's a link.
Forking is not allowed.
No, it just isn't available on Windows.
The Windows 2000 source code <b>has</b> been released. Here it is:
/* printf("Welcome to Windows 3.1"); */
/* printf("Welcome to Windows 3.11"); */
/* printf("Welcome to Windows 95"); */
/* printf("Welcome to Windows NT 3.0"); */
/* printf("Welcome to Windows 98"); */
/* printf("Welcome to Windows NT 4.0"); */
#include "win31.h"
#include "win95.h"
#include "win98.h"
#include "workst~1.h"
#include "evenmore.h"
#include "oldstuff.h"
#include "billrulz.h"
#include "monopoly.h"
#define INSTALL = HARD
char make_prog_look_big[1600000];
void main() {
while(!CRASHED) {
display_copyright_message();
display_bill_rules_message();
do_nothing_loop();
if (first_time_installation) {
make_50_megabyte_swapfile();
do_nothing_loop();
totally_screw_up_HPFS_file_system();
search_and_destroy_the_rest_of_OS/2();
make_futile_attempt_to_damage_Linux();
disable_Netscape();
disable_RealPlayer();
disable_Lotus_Products();
hang_system();
}
write_something(anything);
display_copyright_message();
do_nothing_loop();
do_some_stuff();
if (still_not_crashed) {
display_copyright_message();
do_nothing_loop();
basically_run_windows_3.1();
do_nothing_loop();
do_nothing_loop();
}
if (detect_cache())
disable_cache();
if (fast_cpu()) {
set_wait_states(lots);
set_mouse(speed, very_slow);
set_mouse(action, jumpy);
set_mouse(reaction, sometimes);
}
printf("Welcome to Windows 2000");
if (system_ok())
crash(to_dos_prompt)
else
system_memory = open("a:\swp0001.swp",O_CREATE);
while(something) {
sleep(5);
get_user_input();
sleep(5);
act_on_user_input();
sleep(5);
}
create_general_protection_fault();
}
}
Why does this matter? If a flaw is unknown, its not being exploited and no damage is being done. A security vulnerability is not a problem until someone discovers it.
:-)
It's a problem because it means the user has to install a patch later. If I bought a TV from Sony which developed a fault due to a design flaw, I'd expect the store I bought it from to replace it with a new version that doesn't have the same flaw.
I see the point you're making in the 1st part of your post though
I always considered KDE to be a "desktop environement", and bash, zsh and the rest to be "shells". I'd normally use a shell inside a terminal window in my desktop environment. Calling a desktop environment a shell just confuses things.
The ending of your sentence is implied by the thing that came before it (this post).
would that be:
"iDrive while uSitBackAndWaitForMeToCrash"?
I'm not really into games, so don't own a fancy graphics card that most games (including racer) require to get good performance and fancy graphics. The screenshot was taken on my PC because I didn't want to steal one from Racer's homepage.
I think with Limewire, its the features that make it good rather than the way it looks. Multiple search results open simultaneously makes it a lot more useable than Kazaa Lite. Also, I don't have to get used to another P2P client for using at home or at work - it runs just fine on Macs, PCs and Suns.
I do however think that things like Qt are better. You get it to look the way you want, and generally get better performance.
I'm not of the opinion that an OS consists entirely of its kernel. I'd say that Bash is a part of any Linux operating system. It's not part of the kernel, but is part of the OS. KDE isn't though. The OS works just fine without it. Does MS's OS work just fine without Explorer? I'm not saying this is a bad thing. I'm just pointing out that MS consider Explorer to be part of the OS.
http://www.sorn.net/screenshots/apps/xeena.jpg
That's not a bad product either. If you don't like the Java look and feel, you can tell it to look like Windows. The Windows look doesn't fit in as well on my desktop though.
Windows 2000 (or why not just straight XP?)
The majority of MS's income is from corporate/business customers. For these customers, is there anything that XP does better than Win2K? And Win2K's got tha advantage of having been around for longer, and having more of the bugs ironed out.
I was talking about Redhat. Other than one MS SQL bug, and a handful of IIS ones, all the Microsoft security problems I've heard of are entirely part of their operating system (this includes the Explorer ones, since MS say its a tightly integrated part of the operating system). If KDE had lots of security vulnerabilities, I'd dump it and use Gnome instead - it's just an application (or a suite of applications). I know there are a lot of Apache, Sendmail, etc, security alerts too, but these products have never been called part of the OS. They are applications that you can choose not to install when you're installing the OS.
Linux has millions of people looking through its source code. More than Microsoft could feasibly have. And yet, your post seems to indicate that Windows has about the same amount of fixes (service packs containing multiple fixes) as Linux in the equivalent amount of time. I wonder how many more flaws there are that haven't been discovered yet?
Microsoft did well in this instance, and perhaps this is the start of their focus on security.
You'd think though, that with a software company that's as big as Microsoft, they'd be able to educate their programmers to avoid problems like this in the first place. Yes, everyone makes mistakes, but if you've got >=10 years experience, it's unlikely unless you're just not bothering to pay attention.
I certainly agree that Win 2k, XP, etc. all seem to have more security bugs than you can shake a stick at
:-)
Try subscribing to Redhat's automatic update feature. See how many security updates you get then!
To be fair though, these updates are nearly always for applications, not for the operating system.
"The Most Sophisticated File-sharing Application" is written in Java, and is a fairly good piece of desktop software...
http://www.limewire.com/
From the article: ...the company is allowing the blueprints to its software...
We don't want the design notes - we want the source code!!!
Yeah, but Microsoft patented the bit of it that all desktop software writers will want to use (the Windows.Forms package), thus ensuring that no competing implementation of .Net will be as good as Microsoft's for desktop stuff.
I would have thought they'd let people work from home, but insist that any sensitive data is always encrypted before sending anywhere. That way, the ISP can look at the data if they want, but it could take them a while to break 2048-bit RSA or something like that.
I agree. Much better than having the difference between version 6 and version 7 being significantly less than the difference between version 4 and version 6.
Seriously, it's like a race to see who can have the highest version number sometimes. That doesn't impress me. This is almost as bad as the MHz myth. Internet Explorer is still at version 6, and people like it.
Yup. I like the beachball more though. At the time I had a Sinclair QL, and did a bit of programming which usually turned out to be text-based software. It was easy to mess with the QL's character set to make an Apple-style beachball and make it spin using multiple slightly different looking characters. If X ever had the need for a busy cursor like that, I'd love it to be the beachball.
Using a standard that's different from what all the surrounding countries use is just silly. It'll annoy people when they make the 2 hour trek to a neighbouring country to visit a friend and their phone doesn't work there. Also, I'm sure some of the Iraqis that will be living there will still have mobile phones that use their current standard. Why force them all to buy new phones? That's not being very friendly.
In XP Pro it handles End Task the same way as Windows 2000 does. I use it when I log out and forget to close a Cygwin window for example - works fine there.
Oops - yeah I forogt about that. Talking of Bob, do you know of anywhere you can download it from? We were talking about it at work earlier this week and thought it would be funny to get it on a PC.
Access isn't really a product - it's a toy that you get free with Office to teach your children about databases before they get to use a real one.
I can't comment on Word as I rarely use word processors anynway. Developer studio isn't a bad product - despite lacking a few features (including an ANSI C compiler). Windows NT is really not a good product compared to some things they offer.
They give you the latest product (as opposed to selling it to you). That's what support contracts should be for. Microsoft should do this.