FUD
I am facing a menu that accepts a single character input. Will the letter be in upper case or in lower case? There is a CapsLock light on my keyboard, but it often lies. Which menu choice will I really be making.
FUD
Intelligent criticism of Microsoft's products is irrelevant. No. One intelligent criticism will not revolutionize everything. That's entirely too much to ask. Continual criticism of Microsoft's products, intelligent or otherwise, acts like the little bitty raindrops on the granite mountain peaks. Guess who wins in the end?
and as long as it works who cares. When it stops working, I care.
When I am using MS software and it is a PITA, I join in the MS bashing. When I am no longer using MS software or MS software quits being a PITA, I will quit bashing MS. Guess which will happen first.
Depending on who published it.
I would expect rather different journalistic standards between Le Monde and The National Inquirer. I think Bill Gates has a lot of influence at Microsoft.
Windows was built by a bunch of engineers How many professional engineers are employed by Microsoft? As software developers.?
I don't think Linux is perfectly secure. But it is a lot more secure than Microsoft Windows. Actually the flaws in Linux/BSD are better publicized than those in Microsoft Windows, particularly now that Microsoft wants to quash any early disclosure of bugs.
The wider use of Windows implies that Windows should be of better overall quality. It does not imply that Window is of better quality.
Anyone who has used Windows over the years knows that each version has improved reliability and usability over its predecessor. Most people fail to realize that their computer problems are due to faulty hardware and/or buggy device drivers, not the OS. Does this mean that the quality of the drivers has improved for each generation of Microsoft Windows?
No matter how you architect an OS, at some point you have to rely upon a device driver (coded by someone else) to do the underlying work. That wasn't even completely true with read-mode DOS. There is no reason to give that device drivers uncontrolled access to everything within the system. It's even fairly easy to architect an OS where ALL drivers are always run in user mode. IIRC MTS's paging software was run in user mode.
It's the OS that ultimately gets to write the error messages. Very easy to phrase it so that the OS does not take the blame.
At least with a kernel panic you get some idea of why it stopped. Haven't seen enough to know how good the messages are, but the few I've seen seem to be at least trying to be helpful, particularly if it were the fault of something in the kernel.
Re:And all we need now to complete the picture
on
Dave Barry Does Windows
·
· Score: 2, Funny
Through hard experience, "always shut down Windows properly" is very bad advice.
Anytime Windows is acting crazy, hit reset, hit the power switch, remove the battery if you must. DO NOT GIVE WINDOWS THAT EXTRA CHANCE TO PERMANENTLY STORE ITS DAMAGED MIND ON THE HARD DRIVE. About all the "scanning disk for errors" does is ensure that all of your unused space is listed as free space, not important unless you are extremely short of disk space. I some cases it will actually destroy files you could otherwise recover.
Is the computer usable?
If not, that counts as a crash. If the system is GUI, loss of the GUI counts as a system crash.
If the hardware is faulty and the OS does not identify the faulty hardware, it is an OS problem. Random reboots might come from hardware problems, but unless the OS identifies the hardware fault, it is an OS problem.
Any luck with ftp from the command line? I finally gave up trying. My own solution was to soft-link my home directory into the Apache web server. Took 4 or 5 minutes to pick up the file contents (3g), and another 30+ minutes to finish saving it to disk. Boss's new Toshiba laptop. The thing's embarrasing.
Pretty easy to say.
With crap hardware or software, Linux may not install. Linux may not boot. Once Linux is running, only a shutdown or power fail will take it down. I'm sure there are exceptions, but they are awfully hard to come by. Bumping the cache stick on a 486 did it. Can't think of any others, and some of the junk was just plain bad.
Didn't the FBI have some kind of warning out? Something about the Microsoft patch maybe not being adequate to insure security? And yes, it was just released. We have hardly seen anything yet. Scary isn't it?
Dunno about him, but one visit to Microsoft's security site from my NT Workstation is enough to convince me that Windows will never match Linux in stability or security. After telling the browser about a half-dozen time that I do NOT want to run scripts, IE asks me if I want to debug the scripts I told it I do not want to run. Whatever Microsofts priorities are, security and stability have to be extremely low.
My NT workstations and servers almost never crash on me, but I've learned to hit reset or power switch if anything funny is going on. My IIS servers didn't get code red, but it wasn't because they were patched. Keep calm seas and don't rock the boat and even a very unseaworthy boat will manage to stay afloat. Some computers staying up doesn't mean stable. No computers going down without known good cause is stable.
one badly-written program caused you to switch operating systems... Dunno about the AC, but that one is easy. I've got OpenBSD on my firewall because it works with the BIOS on a PCI SCSI card. RedHat works, but only with the BIOS off and I had some problems with the Floppy drive.
As for trying Windows XP, I have. It's not often you get to laugh out loud at your boss's nice shiny new laptop. 1G P3, 512Meg memory and pathetic performance. Stable enough so that the only feasible way to recover some 3 gig of his email and data was with a RedHat 7.2 Systems Administrator's Survival CD.
Well, you had better luck than I did. Moved a CD writer from a Windows ME system that self-destructed to my new Dell W2k workstation. Made a small batch of Windows 2000 Professional Coasters.
VERY stable systems are systems that have been stable for a few years. That's like VMS, MVS, IBM's VM, FreeBSD 3.x, some Linux 2.0 kernels, maybe.
Stable systems have been in production for a year or so at least and most of the bugs and limitations are KNOWN.
Yeah, XP is so stable that the only way to get 3 gig of data from my bosses virus-infected laptop was with a RedHat 7.2 System Administrators Survival CD. Would have been a little friendlier if the ntfs module were already compiled into the kernel on the cd.
MS is only hype.
Nominally 99.999% reliability. Not just uptime.
It does NOT mean the same as probably 100%.
It includes planning and response for the 1-in-a-million things that do happen.
It includes stuff that insures that no error can go undetected, like dual cpu's and comparators, like parity traces on internal lines. It is expensive.
Good point.
Also consider. You have coded a virus/worm/exploit/etc. What can you do with it?
Closed source --> sit on it or release it. Fixing it is not an option.
Open source --> at least look at how the system could/should stop the attack. There is a better grade of noteriety from closing the hole.
I wonder how many would get hit. How long before word would get out etc.
Not many is my guess and whoever posted it on sourceforge would be extremely embarrased.
It could be done, once, for rather dismal results. Whether my intentions are good or evil, doing this intentionally just will not happen.
The examples are useful, not because someone would put them in intentionally, but because some assumptions about configuration can cause unintended disastrous effects.
BTW, if I have only SCSI drives, you can do anything you please to my/dev/hda.
I'm lazy and just d/l and install the binary.
But.... I feel lots safer doing that if the source is available. Just by sitting there, the source makes the binaries a lot safer.
Consider the "anti" virus as a virus so successful that it usually even comes pre-installed by the manufacturer.
I have a sneaking suspicion that the suposed anti-virus software actually causes more damage than the viruses it attempts to protect from. At best it gives good protection from yesterdays viruses that don't do much damage, no protection from tomorrows viruses which will be dong some damage, and a rather false sense of security.
Turn OFF any anti-virus, inform the useres that they are unprotected, they will get viruses, they just don't need to run them.
Actually a poorly set up Linux/BSD system is probably better set up than a secured NT system.
I could login as root into a Linux box and type chmod -fR 777/. Yes, that would give you the default MS OSes permissions. Is there something equally concise to give an NT system the default permissions of a default Linux system? Is there any concise way of even knowing who has what kind of permissions to what files?
Not only do I normally run my Linux systems as root, I run my NT systems as root. (renamed administrator account).
Sourceforge does not have a bunch of random stuff uploaded by persons unknown. It would be very simple for someone with access to upload a trojan to her specific area, but to what purpose? It's very difficult to do damage without someone noticing and being very noisy about it. Trusting Sourceforge has nothing to do with it. If you're paranoid and lazy, download it, wait a while, and if nobody is making noises, then install/run it.
Slashdot Mirror
To detect.
Detect and recover is why you pay the big bucks to IBM or Sun.
FUD
I am facing a menu that accepts a single character input. Will the letter be in upper case or in lower case? There is a CapsLock light on my keyboard, but it often lies. Which menu choice will I really be making.
FUD
Intelligent criticism of Microsoft's products is irrelevant.
No. One intelligent criticism will not revolutionize everything. That's entirely too much to ask. Continual criticism of Microsoft's products, intelligent or otherwise, acts like the little bitty raindrops on the granite mountain peaks. Guess who wins in the end?
and as long as it works who cares.
When it stops working, I care.
When I am using MS software and it is a PITA, I join in the MS bashing. When I am no longer using MS software or MS software quits being a PITA, I will quit bashing MS. Guess which will happen first.
Depending on who published it.
I would expect rather different journalistic standards between Le Monde and The National Inquirer. I think Bill Gates has a lot of influence at Microsoft.
Windows was built by a bunch of engineers
How many professional engineers are employed by Microsoft? As software developers.?
I don't think Linux is perfectly secure. But it is a lot more secure than Microsoft Windows. Actually the flaws in Linux/BSD are better publicized than those in Microsoft Windows, particularly now that Microsoft wants to quash any early disclosure of bugs.
The wider use of Windows implies that Windows should be of better overall quality. It does not imply that Window is of better quality.
Anyone who has used Windows over the years knows that each version has improved reliability and usability over its predecessor. Most people fail to realize that their computer problems are due to faulty hardware and/or buggy device drivers, not the OS.
Does this mean that the quality of the drivers has improved for each generation of Microsoft Windows?
No matter how you architect an OS, at some point you have to rely upon a device driver (coded by someone else) to do the underlying work.
That wasn't even completely true with read-mode DOS. There is no reason to give that device drivers uncontrolled access to everything within the system. It's even fairly easy to architect an OS where ALL drivers are always run in user mode. IIRC MTS's paging software was run in user mode.
It's the OS that ultimately gets to write the error messages. Very easy to phrase it so that the OS does not take the blame.
At least with a kernel panic you get some idea of why it stopped. Haven't seen enough to know how good the messages are, but the few I've seen seem to be at least trying to be helpful, particularly if it were the fault of something in the kernel.
Hmmm, AOLinux?
(*ducks and runs*)
Through hard experience, "always shut down Windows properly" is very bad advice.
Anytime Windows is acting crazy, hit reset, hit the power switch, remove the battery if you must. DO NOT GIVE WINDOWS THAT EXTRA CHANCE TO PERMANENTLY STORE ITS DAMAGED MIND ON THE HARD DRIVE. About all the "scanning disk for errors" does is ensure that all of your unused space is listed as free space, not important unless you are extremely short of disk space. I some cases it will actually destroy files you could otherwise recover.
Is the computer usable?
If not, that counts as a crash. If the system is GUI, loss of the GUI counts as a system crash.
If the hardware is faulty and the OS does not identify the faulty hardware, it is an OS problem. Random reboots might come from hardware problems, but unless the OS identifies the hardware fault, it is an OS problem.
Any luck with ftp from the command line? I finally gave up trying. My own solution was to soft-link my home directory into the Apache web server. Took 4 or 5 minutes to pick up the file contents (3g), and another 30+ minutes to finish saving it to disk. Boss's new Toshiba laptop. The thing's embarrasing.
Pretty easy to say.
With crap hardware or software, Linux may not install. Linux may not boot. Once Linux is running, only a shutdown or power fail will take it down. I'm sure there are exceptions, but they are awfully hard to come by. Bumping the cache stick on a 486 did it. Can't think of any others, and some of the junk was just plain bad.
Didn't the FBI have some kind of warning out? Something about the Microsoft patch maybe not being adequate to insure security? And yes, it was just released. We have hardly seen anything yet. Scary isn't it?
Dunno about him, but one visit to Microsoft's security site from my NT Workstation is enough to convince me that Windows will never match Linux in stability or security. After telling the browser about a half-dozen time that I do NOT want to run scripts, IE asks me if I want to debug the scripts I told it I do not want to run. Whatever Microsofts priorities are, security and stability have to be extremely low.
My NT workstations and servers almost never crash on me, but I've learned to hit reset or power switch if anything funny is going on. My IIS servers didn't get code red, but it wasn't because they were patched. Keep calm seas and don't rock the boat and even a very unseaworthy boat will manage to stay afloat. Some computers staying up doesn't mean stable. No computers going down without known good cause is stable.
one badly-written program caused you to switch operating systems...
Dunno about the AC, but that one is easy. I've got OpenBSD on my firewall because it works with the BIOS on a PCI SCSI card. RedHat works, but only with the BIOS off and I had some problems with the Floppy drive.
As for trying Windows XP, I have. It's not often you get to laugh out loud at your boss's nice shiny new laptop. 1G P3, 512Meg memory and pathetic performance. Stable enough so that the only feasible way to recover some 3 gig of his email and data was with a RedHat 7.2 Systems Administrator's Survival CD.
Well, you had better luck than I did. Moved a CD writer from a Windows ME system that self-destructed to my new Dell W2k workstation. Made a small batch of Windows 2000 Professional Coasters.
VERY stable systems are systems that have been stable for a few years. That's like VMS, MVS, IBM's VM, FreeBSD 3.x, some Linux 2.0 kernels, maybe.
Stable systems have been in production for a year or so at least and most of the bugs and limitations are KNOWN.
Yeah, XP is so stable that the only way to get 3 gig of data from my bosses virus-infected laptop was with a RedHat 7.2 System Administrators Survival CD. Would have been a little friendlier if the ntfs module were already compiled into the kernel on the cd.
MS is only hype.
Nominally 99.999% reliability. Not just uptime.
It does NOT mean the same as probably 100%.
It includes planning and response for the 1-in-a-million things that do happen.
It includes stuff that insures that no error can go undetected, like dual cpu's and comparators, like parity traces on internal lines. It is expensive.
And how long for one of the mirrors to get suspicious?
Even if nobody is paying any attention, I don't think that would last very long.
Good point.
Also consider. You have coded a virus/worm/exploit/etc. What can you do with it?
Closed source --> sit on it or release it. Fixing it is not an option.
Open source --> at least look at how the system could/should stop the attack. There is a better grade of noteriety from closing the hole.
I wonder how many would get hit. How long before word would get out etc.
/dev/hda.
Not many is my guess and whoever posted it on sourceforge would be extremely embarrased.
It could be done, once, for rather dismal results. Whether my intentions are good or evil, doing this intentionally just will not happen.
The examples are useful, not because someone would put them in intentionally, but because some assumptions about configuration can cause unintended disastrous effects.
BTW, if I have only SCSI drives, you can do anything you please to my
I'm lazy and just d/l and install the binary.
But.... I feel lots safer doing that if the source is available. Just by sitting there, the source makes the binaries a lot safer.
Ok, who has AIX?
;)
Better than panes
Consider the "anti" virus as a virus so successful that it usually even comes pre-installed by the manufacturer.
I have a sneaking suspicion that the suposed anti-virus software actually causes more damage than the viruses it attempts to protect from. At best it gives good protection from yesterdays viruses that don't do much damage, no protection from tomorrows viruses which will be dong some damage, and a rather false sense of security.
Turn OFF any anti-virus, inform the useres that they are unprotected, they will get viruses, they just don't need to run them.
Can a user actually get anything done?
/.
Actually a poorly set up Linux/BSD system is probably better set up than a secured NT system.
I could login as root into a Linux box and type chmod -fR 777
Yes, that would give you the default MS OSes permissions. Is there something equally concise to give an NT system the default permissions of a default Linux system? Is there any concise way of even knowing who has what kind of permissions to what files?
Not only do I normally run my Linux systems as root, I run my NT systems as root. (renamed administrator account).
Sourceforge does not have a bunch of random stuff uploaded by persons unknown. It would be very simple for someone with access to upload a trojan to her specific area, but to what purpose? It's very difficult to do damage without someone noticing and being very noisy about it. Trusting Sourceforge has nothing to do with it. If you're paranoid and lazy, download it, wait a while, and if nobody is making noises, then install/run it.